Only by coming to grips with difficulty can you realize your full potential.

In the tumult of great events, solitude was what I hoped for. Now it is what I love. How is it possible to be contented with anything else when one has come face to face with history?

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone.

For all of us Frenchmen, the guiding rule of our epoch is to be faithful to France.

Politics, when it is an art and a service, not an exploitation, is about acting for an ideal through realities.

I predict you will sink step by step into a bottomless quagmire, however much you spend in men and money." (On Vietnam War)