There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.

It's better to have a bad plan then no plan at all.

France has no friends, only interests.

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!

Every Frenchman wants to enjoy one or more privileges; that's the way he shows his passion for equality

Difficulty attracts the characterful man, for it is by grasping it that he fulfils himself.

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.