To love is not to look at one another: it is to look, together, in the same direction.

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten,' he does not say 'My men were beaten.'

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.

If it is true that wars are won by believers, it is also true that peace treaties are sometimes signed by businessmen.

When you want to build a ship, then do not drum the men together in order to procure wood, to give instructions or to distribute the work, but teach them longing for the wide endless sea.

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

When I find a woman attractive, I have nothing at all to say. I simply watch her smile. Intellectuals take apart her face in order to explain it bit by bit, but they no longer see the smile.