No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope.

It is grace that forms the void inside us and it is grace that can fill the void.

It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is still to count in the world--and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish--she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

Power ... is the supreme end for all those who have not understood.

The speed with which bureaucracy has invaded almost every branch of human activity is something astounding once one thinks about it.

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.