Quotes from Andre Malraux

The sons of torture-victims make good terrorists.

The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.

The extermination camps, in endeavoring to turn man into a beast, intimated that it is not life alone which makes him man.

The true painter strives to paint what can only be seen through his world.

Art is a revolt against fate. All art is a revolt against man's fate.

All art is a revolt against man's fate.

War puts its questions stupidly, peace mysteriously.

One cannot create an art that speaks to men when one has nothing to say.

To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.

Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.

Then I despair... I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always.

A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, nothing else.

Between eigtheen and twenty, life is like an exchange where one buys stocks, not with money, but with actions. Most men buy nothing.

The basic problem is that our civilization, which is a civilization of machines, can teach man everything except how to be a man.

The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself.

The most important thing in life is to see to it that you are never beaten.

What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.

Communism destroys democracy. Democracy can also destroy Communism.

Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real.

A political leader is necessarily an imposter since he believes in solving life's problems without asking its question.

The twenty-first century will be spiritual or it will not be.

The terrible thing about death is that it transforms life into destiny.

The most important thing in life is to see to it that you are never beaten.

Art is a revolt against fate. All art is a revolt against man's fate.