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

When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. We are angry at each other much of the time.

I respect only those who resist me, but I cannot tolerate them.

I always thought I was Jeanne d'Arc and Bonaparte. How little one knows oneself.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.

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.

Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.

As an adolescent I was convinced that France would have to go through gigantic trials, that the interest of life consisted in one day rendering her some signal service and that I would have the occasion to do so.

I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.