The German passion for bureaucracy -- for written and signal forms . . . to move about, to work, to exist -- is like a steel pin pinning each French individual to a sheet of paper, the way an entomologist pins each specimen insect . . .

Genius is a talent only for living, those who possess it have little gift for dying.

[On World War II:] The war, which destroyed so much of everything, was also constructive, in a way. It established clearly the cold, and finally unhypocritical fact that the most important thing on earth to men today is money.

The stench of human wreckage in which the Nazi regime finally sank down to defeat has been the most shocking fact of modern times.

[Charles de Gaulle] has been abysmally careless, like a man running a bus over mountains, who forgot to equip it with good brakes.

Genius is immediate, but talent takes time.

... people who don't want something are less likely to get it than people who do want something.