309 Quotes by Anatole France

Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women’s clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.

You cry, “give us war!” You are visionaries. When will you become thinkers? The thinkers do not look for power and strength from any of the dreams that constitute military art: tactics, strategies, fortifications, artillery and all that rubbish. They do no believe in war, which is a fantasy; they believe in chemistry, which is a science. They know the way to put victory into an algebraic formula.

We should adopt his principles and govern men as they are and not as what we’d like them to be.

For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end .

For all armies are the finest in the world. The second finest army, if one could exist, would be in a notoriously inferior position; it would be certain to be beaten. It ought to be disbanded at once. Therefore, all armies are the finest in the world.

An old philosopher said to Monsieur Coignard, a Reverend Father: ‘You are a pig!’ To which Abad Coignard answered: ‘You flatter me, sir. But unfortunately, I’m only a man.’

Justice is the means by which established injustices are sanctioned.

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can’t understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

Intelligent women always marry fools.