This desire for equity must not lead to an excess of welfare, where nobody is responsible for anything.

Therefore one should speak at the same time of national citizenship and wider European citizenship.

The European model is in danger if we obliterate the principle of personal responsibility.

The problem with a purely collective system is not only that it requires economic growth, and the right sort of demographic trends, but that it prevents people thinking about their futures in a responsible way.

This weakening is worsened by the widening distance between the governed and their governments.

Yes, the European model remains superior to that of America and Japan.

This desire for equity must not lead to an excess of welfare, where nobody is responsible for anything.

My problem is how to find the best way of being useful.

We have to struggle against the conservatives from all sides, not only the right-wingers, but also the left-wing conservatives who don't want to change anything.

My presidential victory, if it had happened, would have been artificial in relation to the Socialist party. It may be that on my deathbed, I will come to regret my decision, but for the moment, I live at peace with it.

Any union that can't accept workers choosing their own representatives through universal franchise is finished.

The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people.

These days there are not enough of such intermediary groups, between the state and the individual, with the result that political leaders are often unduly guided by opinion polls.

For me, socialism has always been about liberty and solidarity, but also about responsibility.

I cannot resign myself to the decline of Europe, and of France.

If you don't have collective agreements between unions and employers, governments have to legislate more.

The unions may continue to decline, but if they do, it'll be their fault.

I had to think whether, after 50 years of hard slog, I was still lucid and fresh enough for the job.

Fundamentally, American society is composed of individuals who don't go out of their way to do each other favours.

The countries that share this conception should be able to go further together, without excluding the others, since they can still live in a greater community of exchange and co-operation.

Even in Britain, the trade unions tell me that employment contracts have less protection than in the past.

The driving force behind the liberal counter-offensive in Europe has been a reaction against irresponsibility.

The unions still have a job to do, representing their members' interests to governments and parliaments. And I think collective agreements still have a role, alongside markets and laws.

I would not be opposed to devising a new system of pensions, in which one part was based on collective provision, but which also gave incentives for people to take out an additional, personal plan.

Cinema explains American society. It's like a Western, with good guys and bad guys, where the weak don't have a place.

The European model is, first, a social and economic system founded on the role of the market, for no computer in the world can process information better than the market.

This desire for equity must not lead to an excess of welfare where nobody is responsible for anything.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

I want the municipality to be a helping hand to the man with a desire of sympathy, to help the fallen when it is not in their power to help themselves.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way by which faith can be acquired.

But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

It was also during my tenure of office that the Japanese Government agreed to the conclusion of a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and signed it, pursuing a policy in harmony with the avowed desire of the people.

'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.

One of the things that has always motivated me to write is the desire to get it out and look at it in an objective way, so that it doesn't cause me any serious pain by staying inside.

In human history, the desire for revenge and the desire for loot have often been closely associated.

I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.

I don't know what keeps me going. Sometimes I wonder... I think it's just pure perseverance and wanting to succeed and having that burning desire to always have success.

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.

It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.

I was interested in telescopes and the way they worked because I had an intense desire to see what things looked like, so I learned how to use telescopes and find things in the sky.

When you do portraits professionally it's not a desire, it's for money.

My desire, my passion, was to help moms with practical encouragement.

Sometimes I'm uncomfortable with the level of fame I've got! It all depends on the day and what's going on. I don't desire any more fame. I don't need it.

This life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed with a desire to change his bed.