A comment has appeared, on what is so great about France. It is very good, but if I don't stick it on top of the pile, nobody except me will see it. So here, at the top of the pile, just for now, it is:

French thinkers have a talent for producing startlingly concise and aphoristic writing in unexpected places, on the most unexpected subjects. Where an Anglo-Saxon thinker might "introduce" and survey his topic before getting deeply into it, a French thinker will distil everything into one sentence, throw it at you, and leave you to ponder it. I think this is indicative of their enormous self-confidence. They know they're right, so why beat around the bush about it? I'm not claiming this is a universal trait, but I have noticed it in a wide range of French intellectuals: in their philosophers (Camus), their historians (Pirenne) and their social scientists (Aron and Tocqueville). Not to mention a mathematician (Pascal) who is famous among literary types for writing a whole book of aphorisms.

En effet.