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

Men are of no importance. What counts is who commands.

No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.

France has lost the battle but she has not lost the war.

History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.

Difficulty attracts the man of character because it is in embracing it that he realizes himself.

Every Frenchman wants to enjoy one or more privileges; that’s the way he shows his passion for equality.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.

The leader is always alone before bad fates.

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.

Always choose the hardest way, on it you will not find opponents.

Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.

The leader must aim high, see big, judge widely, thus setting himself apart form the ordinary people who debate in narrow confines.

These people really aim very badly.

Only peril can bring the French together. One can’t impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 different kinds of cheese.

I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.

Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished. Tomorrow, as today, I will speak on Radio London.

Men will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences. Science will go on whether we are pessimistic or optimistic, as I am. More interesting discoveries than we can imagine will be made, and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm.

It’s a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.

It must be, for there is a logic to everything on this earth and nothing is done without a reason, that God sometimes lets scientists discover.

Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.

I don’t like work but I like what is in work – the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – which no other man can ever know.

The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.

Though you may be last to discover your follies, be always first to correct them.