Charles de Gaulle Quotes
19 quotes from Charles de Gaulle — French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during WWII and served as President of France (1959–1969)..
“I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.”
“The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
“How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?”
“Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.”
“Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.”
“I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”
“Nothing more enhances authority than silence. It is the crowning virtue of the strong, the refuge of the weak, the modesty of the proud, the pride of the humble, the prudence of the wise, and the sense of fools.”
“Always choose the hardest way, on it you will not find opponents.”
“In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.”
“Men can have friends, statesmen cannot.”
“Old age is a shipwreck.”
“There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.”
“Our initial defeat comes from the application by the enemy of ideas that are mine.”
“De Gaulle gave me back honour, the possibility of being able to look people in the face again. To a large degree, his unwillingness to bend, his intransigence are willed. He likes to say that being as weak as he is, intransigence is his only weapon.”
“The system of military integration applied to the Atlantic Alliance, which in fact assigns to the United States the possible conduct of war in Europe, the employment of the forces that would take part in it, and the entire disposition of the atomic arms which would be the basic weapons, deprives France, her people, her Government, and her Command, of the responsibility for her own defense.”
“Honour, common sense, and the interests of the country require that all free Frenchmen, wherever they be, should continue the fight as best they may.”
“France is determined to regain on her whole territory the full exercise of her sovereignty, at present diminished by the permanent presence of allied military elements or by the use which is made of her airspace.”
“The Republic will not abdicate. The people will come to its senses. Progress, independence and peace will carry the day, along with freedom.”
“In reality we are on the stage of a theatre where I have been keeping up the illusion since 1940. I am trying to give France the appearance of a solid, firm, confident and expanding country, while it is a worn-out nation. The whole thing is a perpetual illusion.”
