“The revolutionary government was required to become the government of the war.”

“Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.”

“By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.”

“To be born to create, to love, to win at games is to be born to live in time of peace. But war teaches us to lose everything and become what we were not. It all becomes a question of style.”

“Human rebellion ends in metaphysical revolution. It progresses from appearances to acts, from the dandy to the revolutionary.”

“Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests.”

“There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”