37 Quotes by Maurice Druon

Men who love power are not only dominated, as is generally supposed, by an appetite for wealth and honours. Above all they are influenced by an objective taste for the creation of events, for controlling their occurrence, for acting upon the world with effectiveness and for being always in the right. Wealth and honours are no more than the signs and tools of their influence.

Power, without the consent of those over whom it is exercised, is a fraud that cannot long endure, a delicate balance between fear and rebellion, which may suddenly be overset when enough men become aware that they all think alike.

You know what the common people are like,’ said Artevelde; ‘they never know their own strength till the moment for using it has passed.

Order! As happens with all political blunderers, the word was ceaselessly upon his lips, and nothing could have persuaded him to admit that the world had changed even a little in the last century.

Every man believes to some extent that the world began when he was born and, at the moment of leaving it, suffers at having to let the Universe remain unfinished.

Accursed! Accursed! You shall be accursed to the thirteenth generation!

Merely by living, man becomes degraded and loses in purity what he gains in power. However clear a spring may be, when it becomes a river it cannot help being polluted by mud and slime.

There's the gratitude of sons-in-law for you. You poison a king so that they may take his place, and then they do exactly as they please without consideration for anyone!

In every period, and in every country, there have always been two parties: the reactionary and the progressive.