“To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.”

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.

Don’t ask me who’s influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he’s digested, and I’ve been reading all my life.

Politics, when it is an art and a service, not an exploitation, is about acting for an ideal through realities.

I am a man who belongs to no-one and who belongs to everyone.

The perfection preached in the gospels never yet built an empire. Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning.

I respect only those who resist me, but I cannot tolerate them.

Old age is a shipwreck.

I grew up to always respect authority and respect those in charge.

The Jews remain what they have been at all times: an elite people, self-confident and domineering.

I feel not a person but an instrument of destiny.

Men can have friends, statesmen cannot.

It so happens that the world is undergoing a transformation to which no change that has yet occurred can be compared, either in scope or in rapidity.

Hearing Mass is the ceremony I most favor during my travels. Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.

Gentlemen, I am ready for the questions to my answers.

The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage.

One of the advantages of being disorganized is the joy of discovery.

No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.

I’ve learned that with all the advantages that come with being a grown up comes responsibility. Responsibility to be true to yourself, responsibility to honor those who came before you and responsibility to those who will come after you.

It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.

One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries.

There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.

The moment I used my adversity to my advantage, my career exploded.