«Sharp intelligence, unequalled literary and artistic culture, an obvious talent for using words, passion for honour, action, and friendship. He had all the qualities which could allow us to state that Malraux’s life has never ceased to astonish us.»Georges Pompidou, in André Malraux, Selected pages, Hachette, Vaubourdolle Illustrated Classics, 1955
«When I see Malraux, the greatest of us all, juggling his balls like very few people have juggled before him, my heart aches seeing his tragedy, the one he wears on his face, in the middle of his greatest achievements.»Romain Gary, Promise at Down, Gallimard, 1960
«Malraux, as much as I think, remains the greatest French writer alive and certainly the most unique.»François Mauriac, Bloc-notes, Le Figaro littéraire, 3rd November 1969
«André Malraux shall always stand by my right side. This brilliant friend, passionate about great fates, standing by my side gives me the impression that I am so dull from this point of view. This incomparable witness’s opinion on me helps me grow stronger. I know that when the topic of a debate is very serious, his sharp reasoning will help me chase the shadows away.»Charles de Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope. Renewal, Plon, 1970
«He was a writer open to the world as very few have ever been, he knew all the time how to push the mind towards a new vision. Everything was in his tone, in his expression, in his original art of persuading, which was tailored according to his own use and image: sharp and decisive as he was himself.»Roger Caillois, André Malraux, Maeght Foundation, 1973
«The war had just come to an end, when the cultural world experienced the shock of The Psychology of Art, on which he had been working since ever and which he had been announcing for ten years, delivered in the marvellous, admiringly illustrated, difficult, and imperious shape of The Imaginary Museum (1947).
Thirty years later, it is difficult to seize the outstanding effect generated by this work and the following one. [...] All these pages have totally transformed the discourse on art in our country and perhaps in the entire world.»André Chastel, André Malraux, the man of metamorphosis, Le Monde, 24 November 1976 (republished in The Image in the Mirror, Gallimard, 1980)
«I do not know anyone but him to have been conquered by Art up to being burnt by it. His words were embers. [...] I am so happy to have met him.»Marc Chagall, Like a Fire, La Nouvelle Revue française, July 1977
«He had practiced Nietzsche and Spengler much more than Kant or Hegel. I could not check upon his knowledge of Sanskrit and Asian languages, yet I act as a lawyer and not as a prosecutor when it comes to a frequently challenged issue, that is the authenticity of his culture. When I had the means to check, I was always almost dumbfounded the accuracy and the relevance of his knowledge in terms of literature and history.»Raymond Aron, Memoirs, Julliard, 1983
«[...] his Outlines of a Psychology of the Cinema, his Psychology of Art, The Walnut Trees of Altenburg and Man’s Fate, a type of novel which was criticized back then, but which seems to me to have never been equalled. His article on Faulkner1 is also unforgettable. Malraux truly…»Jean-Luc Godard, in Jean-Luc Godard by Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinéma, 1998, vol. 2
«I have never known so closely a minister so well organized, so respectful of my own work, and so far away from verbal bursts. [...] for four years, I have worked along a master who never subjected me to any fit of anger, even less to the slightest attack of anxiety. Had I not been afraid of making his description insipid, I would have spoken about his extreme “kindness”. He experienced that blaze, that unceasing tumult deep inside him, not in relation to others.»Malraux, a Minister from Day to Day. Souvenirs by André Holleaux, History Committee of the Ministry of Culture, 2004