A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says "I was beaten," he does not say "My men were beaten".
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Charity never humiliated him who profited from it, nor ever bound him by the chains of gratitude, since it was not to him but to God that the gift was made.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery


Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become - to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery