“Only by coming to grips with difficulty can you realize your full potential.”

One can unite the French only under the threat of danger. One cannot simply bring together a nation that produces 265 kinds of cheese.

In the tumult of great events, solitude was what I hoped for. Now it is what I love. How is it possible to be contented with anything else when one has come face to face with history?

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.

It’s better to have a bad plan then no plan at all.

The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.

It’s impossible in normal times to rally a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese.

Victory often goes to the army that makes the least mistakes, not the most brilliant plans.

He who laughs last didn’t get the joke.

A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.

The true statesman is the one who is willing to take risks.

Whereas ordinary officers must be content with behaving correctly in front of their men, the great leaders have always carefully stage-managed their effects.

No, I’m not talking about the Russians; I mean the Germans. In spite of everything, to have pushed so far!

Deliberation is a function of the many; action is the function of one.

I wouldn’t mind dying for France, but not for Air France.

The future does not belong to men.

I am not bad, thank you. But don’t worry, one of these days I shall certainly die.

~My instinct is to protect my children from pain. But adversity is often the thing that gives us character and backbone. It’s always been a struggle for me to back off and let my children go through difficult experiences.~

Everybody understands that acting is a really difficult job. It’s hard work. You’ve got to get dressed up, you’ve got to hang around with beautiful women. It’s difficult. It’s a problem.

We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.

After acknowledging that most law enforcement personnel are fair-minded and do a difficult job, it only takes one exception to create a terrible tragedy.

True lovers know how trifling a thing is money yet how difficult to blend with love!

Often, I am asked, ‘What was your father like?’ or, ‘What would he think?’ These are very difficult questions to answer, as I was so very young when I lost my father.

They looked great, you know the drawings of the guys playing looked great and bits of string around their necks. So it didn’t seem to be that difficult a thing to do, or that inaccessible.

The constant attention is what is so difficult.