Top 100 Gaulle Quotes
#1. General de Gaulle was a thoroughly bad boy. The day he arrived, he thought he was Joan of Arc and the following day he insisted that he was Georges Clemenceau.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#2. My favourite novel is Frederick Forsythe's Day Of The Jackal, the story about the unproven case of this apparent Englishman who was hired to assassinate De Gaulle....
Charles Kennedy
#3. I wholeheartedly welcomed Charles de Gaulle eulogy of French valour, to which he attributed the liberation of Paris.
Coco Chanel
#4. I am a born novelist, which does not happen all that often. There are people who try to write for a certain time, then they become Ministers of Culture under de Gaulle, and they begin living their own fictions.
Gore Vidal
#5. General de Gaulle is again pictured in our newspapers, looking as usual like an embattled codfish.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#6. Recalled Sir Edward Spears, the wartime liaison between Churchill and de Gaulle. We had 15,000 French sailors at Liverpool. I went to speak to them. I tried to persuade them to continue the fighting. Impossible ...
Charles Kaiser
#7. Gen. de Gaulle is only concerned about history, and no jury can dictate the judgment of history. Georges Pompidou
Mark Kurlansky
#8. General [De Gaulle], you must not hate your friends more than you hate your enemies
Clementine Churchill
#9. Don't think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.
Donald Rumsfeld
#10. Hercules King of Rome and of Annemark, three times one surnamed de Gaulle will lead, Italy and the one of St. Mark to tremble, first monarch, renowned above all.
Nostradamus
#11. For get this quite clear, every time we have to decide between Europe and the open sea, it is always the open sea we shall choose. Every time I have to decide between you [Charles de Gaulle] and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.
Winston S. Churchill
#12. I always say if you're going to do a movie about Charles de Gaulle get a Frenchman, you know. I'm not French. And yeah, sure I could get with a dialect coach and work for six months trying to talk like a Frenchman. But there's some French actors. Just get one of them, you know.
Billy Bob Thornton
#13. Now we are intimately locked together. You get swine flu in Mexico; it's a problem for Charles de Gaulle Airport 24 hours later. Lehman Brothers goes down; the whole lot collapses. There are fires in the steppes of Russia; food riots in Africa.
Paddy Ashdown
#14. Chanel, General De Gaulle and Picasso are the three most important figures of our time.
Andre Malraux
#15. I was chef to the French Presidents between '56 and '59, finished with de Gaulle, and during de Gaulle I remember serving Eisenhower, Nehru, Tito, Macmillan; those were the heads of state at the time. I never saw anyone. No one would ever, ever, ever come to the kitchen. You couldn't even see them.
Jacques Pepin
#16. When I first arrived at the Matignon, my desire was to reconcile Parliament and De Gaulle. I had forgotten only two things. Parliament and De Gaulle.
Georges Pompidou
#17. Only one deputy, one admiral, and one leading academic remain with the Free French in London, and de Gaulle notices that all of his earliest supporters are either Jews or Socialists. A man of mythic pride, de Gaulle is infuriated by his total dependence on the British.
Charles Kaiser
#18. When France fell in 1940, De Gaulle was a temporary brigadier general.
John Eisenhower
#19. Perhaps in the long view, de Gaulle was more responsible with his troublesome interventions into our domestic politics, for unifying our country than we will ever give him credit for.
Judy LaMarsh
#20. France had a policy, initiated by General de Gaulle, of trying to turn Europe into what was then called a 'third force,' independent of the two superpowers, so Europe should pursue an independent course.
Noam Chomsky
#21. [Charles de Gaulle] has been abysmally careless, like a man running a bus over mountains, who forgot to equip it with good brakes.
Janet Flanner
#22. Nobody can easily bring together a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese' (Charles de Gaulle, 1961 speech)
Mark Kurlansky
#23. The desire of privilege and the taste of equality are the dominant and contradictory passions of the French of all times.
Charles De Gaulle
#26. He will soon be claiming that the Resistance has liberated the world.
Coco Chanel
#27. Hearing Mass is the ceremony I most favor during my travels. Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.
Charles De Gaulle
#28. Today we are crushed by the sheer weight of the mechanized forces hurled against us, but we can still look to the future in which even greater mechanized forces will bring us victory. Therein lies the destiny of the world.
Charles De Gaulle
#29. We may go to the moon, but that' s not very far. The greatest distance we have to cover still lies within us.
Charles De Gaulle
#31. How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?
Charles De Gaulle
#35. Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.
Charles De Gaulle
#37. Treaties you see are like girls and roses; they last while they last.
Charles De Gaulle
#39. 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.
Charles De Gaulle
#41. A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.
Charles De Gaulle
#42. In war, the policy of least exertion always risks being paid for dearly.
Charles De Gaulle
#43. There can be no other criterion, no other standard than gold. Yes, gold which never changes, which can be shaped into ingots, bars, coins, which has no nationality and which is eternally and universally accepted as the unalterable fiduciary value par excellence.
Charles De Gaulle
#44. You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.
Charles De Gaulle
#45. I have against me the bourgeois, the military and the diplomats, and for me, only the people who take the Metro.
Charles De Gaulle
#49. Treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last.
Charles De Gaulle
#50. Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.
Charles De Gaulle
#51. It's impossible in normal times to rally a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese.
Charles De Gaulle
#52. I am a man who belongs to nobody and who belongs to everybody.
Charles De Gaulle
#53. In the tumult of great events, solitude was what I hoped for. Now it is what I love. How is it possible to be contented with anything else when one has come face to face with history?
Charles De Gaulle
#54. Why do you think that at 67 I would start a career as a dictator ?
Charles De Gaulle
#55. Belgium is a country invented by the British to annoy the French.
Charles De Gaulle
#56. The sword is the axis of the world and grandeur cannot be divided.
Charles De Gaulle
#60. 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.
Charles De Gaulle
#61. No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.
Charles De Gaulle
#63. The Jews remain what they have been at all times: an elite people, self-confident and domineering.
Charles De Gaulle
#64. The perfection preached in the gospels never yet built an empire. Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning.
Charles De Gaulle
#65. There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.
Charles De Gaulle
#67. The presidency is temporary - but the family is permanent.
Yvonne De Gaulle
#69. Difficulty attracts the characterful man, for it is by grasping it that he fulfils himself.
Charles De Gaulle
#71. For all of us Frenchmen, the guiding rule of our epoch is to be faithful to France.
Charles De Gaulle
#72. I might have had trouble saving France in 1946 - I didn't have television then.
Charles De Gaulle
#73. Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.
Charles De Gaulle
#74. 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!
Charles De Gaulle
#77. You start out giving your hat, then you give your coat, then your shirt, then your skin and finally your soul.
Charles De Gaulle
#78. Politics, when it is an art and a service, not an exploitation, is about acting for an ideal through realities.
Charles De Gaulle
#80. Only by coming to grips with difficulty can you realize your full potential.
Charles De Gaulle
#81. It will not be any European statesman who will unite Europe: Europe will be united by the Chinese.
Charles De Gaulle
#82. Authority doesn't work without prestige, or prestige without distance.
Charles De Gaulle
#87. Adversity attracts the man of character. He seeks out the bitter joy of responsibility.
Charles De Gaulle
#89. Always choose the most difficult way, there you will not meet competitors.
Charles De Gaulle
#90. One can unite the French only under the threat of danger. One cannot simply bring together a nation that produces 265 kinds of cheese.
Charles De Gaulle
#92. In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.
Charles De Gaulle
#94. I have heard your views. They do not harmonize with mine. The decision is taken unanimously.
Charles De Gaulle
#95. How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?
Charles De Gaulle
#96. Every Frenchman wants to enjoy one or more privileges; that's the way he shows his passion for equality
Charles De Gaulle
#97. In order to be the master, the politician poses as the servant.
Charles De Gaulle
#100. History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.
Charles De Gaulle
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