Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

When people don't have an objective, there's much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.

The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.

For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.

Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.