“Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.”

You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless.

One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day was; one cannot judge life until death.

For glory gives herself only to those who have always dreamed of her.

Belgium is a country invented by the British to annoy the French.

I have heard your views. They do not harmonize with mine. The decision is taken unanimously.

I’m not at all embarrassed to be a revolutionary.

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

You start out giving your hat, then you give your coat, then your shirt, then your skin and finally your soul.

We may go to the moon, but that’ s not very far. The greatest distance we have to cover still lies within us.

A great country worthy of the name does not have any friends.

To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.

A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.

How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over two hundred varieties of cheese?

At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure.

I don’t spend a huge amount of time fixated on climate denial because I don’t think that their objections, though sometimes couched in science, are based in science. I think they’re based in ideology. And I don’t think there’s anything you can do.

At a time when U.S. jobs are heading overseas at a record pace, and amidst increased sanctions on our manufacturers and producers from other countries, it’s imperative that we do all we can to provide our businesses a climate to operate successfully.

I’m guessing the most efficient way would be to transfer an awful lot of technology, but also direct aid to deal with climate emergencies already underway. Hillary [Clinton] has already said $100 billion a year would be appropriate.

In the States we’ve had by far the largest demonstrations in the last few years. The largest civil disobedience actions about anything in US history in the last 30 years have all been centred around the climate.

You can’t compare eras. But drivers of each era adapt to the needs and climate of their time. There are good and bad points to every era of the sport. I’m not really nostalgic about the past.

Today’s business climate is not for me.

We have a policy at Greenpeace that we no longer debate people who don’t accept the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change.

Despite this, funding from rich countries to help the poor and vulnerable adapt to climate change is not even 1 percent of what is needed.