Here are some of my favorite lines from the book:
"For the first time he understood that the men opposing him and his aims were not necessarily dirty dogs impelled by the desire to do him harm and that their conception of the world, of life and politics, might be no less valid than his own."
"We don't want the population of this town to be able one day to accuse us of provoking the massacre of innocent civilians, women and children, and the destruction of private houses and public buildings, to satisfy an outworn conception of military honor. Winning a war does not mean capturing towns but winning the hearts of the population."
"Who was the idiot who said that man lives on bread? He lives on myths and conceives his own personal paradise."
"Do you believe in God?"
"Only on certain days."
"Why only on certain days?"
"Because I don't always feel in need
of Him. I'm often amazed at the way men manage on their own. Then I see
them sink, struggle, cry for help and die, clamoring for an explanation.
I believe God may be that explanation."
"You see, one must always distrust men who indulge in personal adventures, especially in countries which are not their own. They don't have popular support behind them; they don't even want it. They act from pride or the need to prove to themselves that they're superior to others. There are plenty of these adventurers in Asia nowadays, some of them quite clever and courageous, who are trying to upset the course of history. But they're not very loyal to those they exploit. When they're captured, since they have no valid reason for not talking, they betray their accomplices. Because they can't ever have any friends, only accomplices."
"Nowadays one can no longer be simply a Communist, just as at the time of the Wars of Religion one couldn't be simply a Chrisitian. One had to choose between Catholic and Protestant, just as today one has to choose between pro-Russian and pro-Chinese, White and Yellow.... At least the color of one's skin didn't come in to it in the days of the Guises and Colignys. At one time I was tempted by your Marxist nonsense. It was an attractive proposition, a religion that was at the same time an economic and politcial system and could work for the entire world, the Whites, the Negroes, the Yellow races... communism is the same as everything else. It doesn't prevent one from being fooled."
"We thought Communism was a monolithic religion. It merely needed Stalin's disappearance for the world to realize there were still some laws superior to ideologies and religions - the laws of geo-politics, the eternal conflict between wealth and poverty."
"The graveyards are full of irreplaceable men who have been easily replaced."