In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.

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.

Old France, weighed down with history, prostrated by wars and revolutions, endlessly vacillating from greatness to decline, but revived, century after century, by the genius of renewal!

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

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.

Nothing builds authority up like silence, splendor of the strong and shelter of the weak.

How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?