Sacha Guitry

“When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her”. –Sacha Guitry

Léon Blum

“The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought”. –Léon Blum

Paul Valéry

“Politics is the art of stopping people from minding their own business”. –Paul Valéry

Frédéric Bastiat

“The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else”. –Frédéric Bastiat

Charles Péguy

“The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors”. –Charles Péguy

Joan of Arc

“Children say that people are sometimes hanged for speaking the truth”. –Joan of Arc

Nicolas Chamfort

“I once read that there’s nothing worse for everyone concerned than a reign that’s lasted too long. I’ve also heard that God is eternal”. –Nicolas Chamfort

Henri Laborit

“Doubting, it’s believing that we never had understood the whole thing”. –Henri Laborit

Marcel Duchamp

“I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own tastes”. –Marcel Duchamp

Frédéric Chopin

“I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them”. Frédéric Chopin

Marcel Proust

“We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, and effort which no one can spare us”. –Marcel Proust

Honoré Mirabeau

“A nation regenerates itself only upon heaps of corpses”. –Honoré Mirabeau

Henri de Lubac

“It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less. Injustice and violence are still reigning; but they are now in the service of degraded passions”. –Henri de Lubac

King Henry VIII

“Alas, how can the poor souls live in concord when you preachers sow amongst them in your sermons debate and discord? They look to you for light and you bring them darkness”. –King Henry VIII

Jean Giraudoux

“Education makes us more stupid than the brutes. A thousand voices call to us on every hand, but our ears are stopped with wisdom”. –Jean Giraudoux

Louis Pasteur

“A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world”. –Louis Pasteur

Jean Henri Fabre

“We have within us, from the start, that which will distinguish us from the vulgar herd”. –Jean Henri Fabre

Yves Saint Laurent

“Fashions fade, style is eternal”. –Yves Saint Laurent

Denis Diderot

“From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step”. –Denis Diderot

Eugene Ionesco

“I believe that what separates us all from one another is simply society itself, or, if you like, politics. This is what raises barriers between men, this is what creates misunderstandings”. –Eugene Ionesco

Auguste Comte

“The dead governs the living”. –Auguste Comte

Claude Debussy

“Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art”. –Claude Debussy

Voltaire

“The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture for wild beasts to fight in”. –Voltaire

Bruno Walter

“Napoleon is dead — but Beethoven lives”. –Bruno Walter

Nathalie Sarraute

“It’s the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles”. –Nathalie Sarraute

Charles de Gaulle

“Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word”. –Charles de Gaulle

Alexis Carrel

“Everyone makes a greater effort to hurt other people than to help himself”. –Alexis Carrel

Georges Bizet

“As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note”. –Georges Bizet

Luc de Clapiers

“To execute great things, one should live as though one would never die”. –Luc de Clapiers

Georges Duhamel

“It is always brave to say what everyone thinks”. –Georges Duhamel

Giuseppe Mazzini

“So long as you are ready to die for humanity, the life of your country is immortal”. –Giuseppe Mazzini

Maximilien Robespierre

“To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty”. –Maximilien Robespierre

Albert Schweitzer

“The African is my brother — but he is my younger brother by several centuries”. –Albert Schweitzer

Ernest Renan

“To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious”. –Ernest Renan

Marquis de Lafayette

“When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties”. –Marquis de Lafayette

Emile Durkheim

“It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh”. –Emile Durkheim

Gustave Flaubert

“To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost”. –Gustave Flaubert

Hector Berlioz

“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils”. –Hector Berlioz

Ferdinand Foch

“The will to conquer is the first condition of victory”. –Ferdinand Foch

John Calvin

“I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels”. –John Calvin

Georges Clemenceau

“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration, without the usual interval of civilization”. –Georges Clemenceau

Albert Camus

“Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is”. –Albert Camus

Marquis de Sade

“Woman’s destiny is to be wanton, like the bitch, the she-wolf; she must belong to all who claim her”. –Marquis de Sade

Napoleon Bonaparte

“The act of policing is, in order to punish less often, punish more severely”. –Napoleon Bonaparte

Paul Gauguin

“I shut my eyes in order to see”. –Paul Gauguin