Power ought to serve as a check to power.

There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.

The less men think, the more they talk.

A rational army would run away.

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.

In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.