"Now is not the time for making..." - Quote by Voltaire

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”

“There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics.”

“It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.”

“There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.”

“The success of an assailant's attack depends on surprise, and if you're sufficiently alert to prevent a surprise, your counterattack is already halfway to being successful.”

“I treat policies like war. I hoodwink one flank so as to trounce the other. In my family we kneel only to God.”

“How can we be enemies when there is so much that pulls us together? But in general I found that I had to work with each one of my foreign colleagues in a way that was consistent with their system. Some are democracies, some are not.”

“Where nature makes natural allies of us all, we can demonstrate that beneficial relations are possible even with those with whom we most deeply disagree-and this must someday be the basis of world peace and world law.”

“Men are very apt to run into extremes, hatred to England may carry come into an excess of Confidence in France... I am heartily disposed to entertain the most favourable sentiments of our new ally and to cherish them in others to a reasonable degree; but it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.”