Only peril can bring the French together. One can’t impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 different kinds of cheese.
One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day was; one cannot judge life until death.
Old France, weighed down with history, prostrated by wars and revolutions, endlessly vacillating from greatness to decline, but revived, century after century, by the genius of renewal!
It so happens that the world is undergoing a transformation to which no change that has yet occurred can be compared, either in scope or in rapidity.
It’s impossible in normal times to rally a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese.
The great leaders have always stage-managed their effects.
I might have had trouble saving France in 1946 – I didn’t have television then.
Politics, when it is an art and a service, not an exploitation, is about acting for an ideal through realities.
The true statesman is the one who is willing to take risks.
They really are bad shots.
I myself have become a Gaullist only little by little.
I feel not a person but an instrument of destiny.
Leaders of men are later remembered less for the usefulness of what they have achieved than for the sweep of their endeavors.
One does not arrest Voltaire.
In war, the policy of least exertion always risks being paid for dearly.
Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the fate of the world.
I wouldn’t mind dying for France, but not for Air France.
France has lost the battle but she has not lost the war.
Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.
Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.
Every Frenchman wants to enjoy one or more privileges; that’s the way he shows his passion for equality.