44 quotes
If it is true that wars are won by believers, it is also true that peace treaties are sometimes signed by businessmen.
Letter to an American (1944)
Any propaganda is by definition amoral, and in order to achieve its aim it makes use of any sentiment, whether noble, vulgar, or base.
Letter to an American (1944)
In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
I will appoint captains to rule my cities, for it is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.
Citadelle (1948)
To be a man is to be responsible: to be ashamed of miseries you did not cause; to be proud of your comrades' victories; to be aware, when setting one stone, that you are building a world.
No man can draw a free breath who does not share with other men a common and disinterested ideal. Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
Contrary to the vulgar illusion, it is thanks to the metal, and by virtue of it, that the pilot rediscovers nature. As I have already said, the machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
Mad is the man who is forever gritting his teeth against that granite block, complete and changeless, of the past.
Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.
Living is being born slowly. It would be a little too easy if we could borrow ready-made souls.
Flight to Arras (1942)
I had a vision of the face of destiny.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. (Translated by Lewis Galantière in "Wind, Sand and Stars")
Terre des Hommes (1939)
"I swear that what I went through, no animal would have gone through." This sentence, the noblest ever spoken, this sentence that defines man's place in the universe, that honors him, that re-establishes the true hierarchy, floated back into my thoughts.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the stars.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
This viscous whiteness became in my mind the frontier between the real and the unreal, between the known and the unknowable. Already I was beginning to realize that a spectacle has no meaning except it be seen through the glass of a culture, a civilization, a craft.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded. These prison walls that this age of trade has built up round us, we can break down. We can still run free, call to our comrades, and marvel to hear once more, in response to our call, the impassioned chant of the human voice.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
All of us, in words that contradict each other, express at bottom the same exalted impulse. What sets us against one another is not our aims — they all come to the same thing — but our methods, which are the fruit of our varied reasoning.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
Confuse not love with the ravings of possession, which bring the worst sufferings. For contrary to the general opinion, love does not cause suffering. But the instinct of ownership causes suffering, which is the contrary of love.
Citadelle or The Wisdom of the Sands (1948)
American mothers did not give their sons for the pursuit of material aims. Nor did these boys accept the idea of risking their lives for such material aims. I know — and will later tell my countrymen — that it was a spiritual crusade that led you into the war.
Letter to an American (1944)