In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?

The true statesman is the one who is willing to take risks.

When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself.

A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.

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.

How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over two hundred varieties of cheese?