Charles De Gaulle Quotes

I have heard your views. They do not harmonize with mine. The decision is taken unanimously.

All my life I have had a certain idea of France.

It is better to have a bad method than to have none.

We may go to the moon, but that' s not very far. The greatest distance we have to cover still lies within us.

There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.

For glory gives herself only to those who have always dreamed of her.

In order to be the master, the politician poses as the servant.

No, I'm not talking about the Russians; I mean the Germans. In spite of everything, to have pushed so far!

Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.

The cemetery is filled with indispensable men.

I respect only those who resist me, but I cannot tolerate them.

I might have had trouble saving France in 1946 - I didn't have television then.

For all of us Frenchmen, the guiding rule of our epoch is to be faithful to France.

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.

In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?

France has no friends, only interests.

Always choose the hardest way, on it you will not find opponents

Never relinquish the initiative.

I grew up to always respect authority and respect those in charge.

I feel not a person but an instrument of destiny.

They really are bad shots.

Authority doesn't work without prestige, or prestige without distance.

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!

Nothing builds authority up like silence, splendor of the strong and shelter of the weak.

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.

The desire of privilege and the taste of equality are the dominant and contradictory passions of the French of all times.

I'm not at all embarrassed to be a revolutionary.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

Difficulty attracts the man of character because it is in embracing it that he realizes himself

One does not arrest Voltaire.

Belgium is a country invented by the British to annoy the French.

At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure.

These people really aim very badly.

Treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last.

We are not here to laugh.

War stirs in men's hearts the mud of their worst instincts. It puts a premium on violence, nourishes hatred, and gives free rein to cupidity. It crushes the weak, exalts the unworthy, and bolsters tyranny ..Time and time again it has destroyed all ordered living, devastated hope, and put the prophets to death.

I predict you will sink step by step into a bottomless quagmire, however much you spend in men and money. (On Vietnam War)

You'll live. Only the best get killed.

One must speak little. In action one must say nothing. The chief is the one who does not speak.

No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.

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. To speak is to ... dissipate one's strength; whereas what action demands is concentration. Silence is a necessary preliminary to the ordering of one's thoughts.

No nation has friends only interests.

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.

You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.

I wouldn't mind dying for France, but not for Air France.

Deliberation is a function of the many; action is the function of one.

In war, the policy of least exertion always risks being paid for dearly.

The future does not belong to men ...

One cannot govern with 'buts'.

You start out giving your hat, then you give your coat, then your shirt, then your skin and finally your soul.

Treaties you see are like girls and roses; they last while they last.

Men are of no importance. What counts is who commands.

One can unite the French only under the threat of danger. One cannot simply bring together a nation that produces 265 kinds of cheese.

Long live Montreal, Long live Quebec! Long live Free Quebec!

A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.

It will not be any European statesman who will unite Europe: Europe will be united by the Chinese.

Character is the virtue of hard times.

The great leaders have always stage-managed their effects.

Politics, when it is an art and a service, not an exploitation, is about acting for an ideal through realities.

How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over two hundred varieties of cheese?

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.

The more I get to know men, the more I love dogs.

The evolution toward Communism is inevitable.

You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless.

In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.

I have against me the bourgeois, the military and the diplomats, and for me, only the people who take the Metro.

Only by coming to grips with difficulty can you realize your full potential.

I am a man who belongs to nobody and who belongs to everybody.

France was built with swords. The fleur-de-lis, symbol of national unity, is only the image of a spear with three pikes.

It is not tolerable, it is not possible, that from so much death, so much sacrifice and ruin, so much heroism, a greater and better humanity shall not emerge.

Once upon a time there was an old country, wrapped up in habit and caution. We have to transform our old France into a new country and marry it to its time.

A great country worthy of the name does not have any friends.

My dear and old country, here we are once again together faced with a heavy trial.

Old age is a shipwreck.

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.

Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished. Tomorrow, as today, I will speak on Radio London.

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.

Every Frenchman wants to enjoy one or more privileges; that's the way he shows his passion for equality

A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.

Why do you think that at 67 I would start a career as a dictator ?

Men can have friends, statesmen cannot.

The leader is always alone before bad fates.