Reflections on Men and Events

France. "The emotional side of me tends to imagine France, like the princess in the fairy stories or the Madonna in the frescoes, as dedicated to an exalted and exceptional destiny. Instinctively I have the feeling that Providence has created her either for complete successes or for exemplary misfortunes ... In short, to my mind, France cannot be France without greatness."

General & Artists. "A military leader, in conceiving his plans, undergoes an experience analogous to that of the creative artist. The latter does not cease to use intelligence. He draws upon it for examples, procedures, knowledge. But creation itself is possible for him only through the exercise of an instinctive faculty--inspiration."

Speech. "To speak is to dilute one's thought, dissipate one's ardor--in brief, to disperse one's energies when action demands that one concentrate."

France's Prewar Politicians. "To resist events, they affected to be unaware of them."

British Diplomacy. "Without having experienced it oneself, it is impossible to imagine what a concentration of effort, what a variety of procedures, what insistence, by turns gracious, pressing and threatening, the English were capable of deploying in order to obtain satisfaction."

U.S. Diplomacy. "The U.S. brings to great affairs elementary feelings and a complicated policy."

Marshal Petain. "In spite of everything, I am convinced that in other times Marshal Petain would not have consented to don the purple in the midst of national surrender . . . But alas! under the outer shell, the years had gnawed his character. Age was delivering him over to the maneuvers of people who were clever at covering themselves with his majestic lassitude. Old age is a shipwreck."

Winston Churchill. "When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. So we were very often angry at each other."

U.S. Ambassador Robert Murphy. "Mr. Murphy, skillful and resolute, had long been active in [Paris] society and was inclined, it seemed, to believe that France consisted of the people with whom he dined."

Molotov. "He let nothing escape him that appeared spontaneous. In Molotov, who was, and wanted to be, merely a perfectly adjusted cog in an implacable machine, I thought I had identified a complete success of the totalitarian system. I could feel the melancholy of it."

Anthony Eden. "I admired not only his brilliant intelligence, his knowledge of affairs, and the charm of his manners, but also the art he had of creating and maintaining around the negotiation a sympathetic atmosphere which favored agreement when that was possible and avoided wounds when it was not."

Exploring Space. "We may as well go to the moon, but that's not very far. The greatest distance we have to cover still lies within us."

Germany (to a German audience in 1945). "The world changes, and I firmly believe that henceforth there is every reason why you should be closer rather than farther from us. You will note that I have spoken only of the future and the present. This is not unintentional."

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