French People Quotes

I know of no other place that is so fascinating yet so frustrating, so aware of the world and its own place within it but at the same time utterly insular. A country touched by nostalgia, with a past so great - so marked by brilliance and achievement - that French people today seem both enriched and burdened by it. France is like a maddening, moody lover who inspires emotional highs and lows. One minute it fills you with a rush of passion, the next you're full of fury, itching to smack the mouth of some sneering shopkeeper or smug civil servant. Yes, it's a love-hate relationship. ~ Sarah Turnbull

In France, it's always about life, normal life. We always stick with these realistic things. So when French people are dreaming about American movies, they go and see the thrillers, and Westerns, and science fiction, huge entertaining movies. ~ Berenice Bejo

Did not manage to convince the French people that we were going in the right direction. ~ Alain Juppe

French women have been made beautiful by the French people - they're very aware of their bodies, the way they move and speak, they're very confident of their sexuality. French society's made them like that. ~ Charlotte Rampling

It's all about the "French Paradox," that much-publicized puzzle of how French people eat all that fatty food and drink tons of wine, yet still manage to be svelte and sophisticated, not to mention cheese-eating surrender monkeys. ~ Julie Powell

I do think British tailoring is the best. French people hate me when I say that, but I do think it's true. ~ Sean Lennon

Smoking is, as far as I am concerned, the entire point of being an adult. Many people find smoking objectionable. I myself find many - even more - things objectionable. I do not like aftershave lotion, adults who roller-skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tan. I do not, however, go around enacting legislation and putting up signs. ~ Fran Lebowitz

Real French people don't bake! At least they don't bake anything complicated, finicky, tricky or unreliable. ~ Dorie Greenspan

I didn't look in Marie's direction. I didn't have time to, because the presiding judge told me in bizarre language that I was to have my head cut off in a public square in the name of the French people... ~ Albert Camus

51% of the French people - who are not very religious - were thinking that what "Charlie Hebdo" did was unwise. They aren't asking for a law to prevent Charlie Hebdo from publishing caricatures, but they are calling on its editors to be a bit more sensible. ~ Tariq Ramadan

The clerks are French, and, like most French people, are in a bad temper till they have eaten their lunch. ~ George Orwell

It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

This (French-Kissing) is a really sexy thing to do, according to the French people, although you should bear in mind that they also like to eat snails. ~ Dave Barry

People who do not speak our language very well do complain of feeling rebuffed by French people, who can sometimes be impatient, or even intolerant. ~ Bernard Pivot

There is a painful joke that Europeans often tell of their Gallic neighbors: God created France, the most beautiful country in the world with so much good in it, and ended up feeling guilty about it. He had to do something to make it fair. And so, he created the French people. ~ Janine Di Giovanni

I'm not Catholic. I don't believe in God. But at the same time, I'm obsessed by the sacred, by spirituality. The question of redemption has been present well before Christianity, but as French people are a bit stupid, they see all that in religious terms. ~ Bruno Dumont

You know why the French don't want to bomb Saddam Hussein Because he hates America he loves mistresses and he wears a beret. He is French people. ~ Conan O'Brien

I must represent France, and I want to be elegant, and I want the French people to be proud of me, you know. ~ Carla Bruni

What is most frightening about Vautrin's lecture is that his brisk portrait of Restoration society contains such precise figures. As I will soon show, the structure of the income and wealth hierarchies in nineteenth-century France was such that the standard of living the wealthiest French people could attain greatly exceeded that to which one could aspire on the basis of income from labor alone. Under such conditions, why work? And why behave morally at all? Since social inequality was in itself immoral and unjustified, why not be thoroughly immoral and appropriate capital by whatever means are available? The ~ Thomas Piketty

I want the French people to respect values that allow each individual to practice his or her faith, but in the frame of our common rules of secularism. ~ Francois Hollande

I'm going to gather all the French people who want change. ~ Francois Hollande

The French people recognizes the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. The first day of every month is to be dedicated to the eternal. ~ Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

Ordinary French people. Citizens of fear. ~ Jean-Claude Izzo

...the presiding judge told me in bizarre language that I was to have my head cut off in a public square in the name of the French people...The lawyer put his hand on my wrist. I wasn't thinking about anything anymore. But the presiding judge asked me if I had anything to say. I thought about it. I said, 'No.' That's when they took me away. ~ Albert Camus

On recent events in a New York hotel room: What happened was not just inappropriate, it was more than that, it was a fault; a fault toward my wife, my children, my friends but also a fault toward the French people who placed in me their hope for change. ~ Dominique Strauss-Kahn

They've always made a bigger deal about the side effects of drinking pregnant in America than they have in France. But then, the Americans make a bigger deal of everything. It's a bad sign, this trial. It shows very poor taste. It shows that French people are eager to place the blame elsewhere for their own choices. Between that and the arrival of Starbucks, you'll see. ~ Courtney Maum

French people are Italian people in a bad mood. ~ Jean Cocteau

If Charles Lindbergh, flying with no instruments other than a bologna sandwich, managed to cross the Atlantic and land safely on a runway completely covered with French people, why are today's airplanes, which are equipped with radar and computers and individualized liquor bottles, unable to cope with fog? ~ Dave Barry

Mma Ramotswe had listened to a World Service broadcast on her radio one day which had simply taken her breath away. It was about philosophers who called themselves existentialists and who, as far as Mma Ramotswe could ascertain, lived in France. These French people said that you should just live in a way which made you feel real, and that the real thing to do was the right thing too. Mma Ramotswe had listened in astonishment. You did not have to go to France to meet existentialists, she reflected; there were many existentialists right here in Botswana. Note Mokoti, for example. She had been married to an existentialist herself, without even knowing it. Note, that selfish man who never once put himself out for another--not even for his wife--would have approved of existentialists, and they of him. It was very existentialist, perhaps, to go out to bars every night while your pregnant wife stayed at home, and even more existentialist to go off with girls--young existentialist girls--you met in bars. It was a good life being an existentialist, although not too good for all the other, nonexistentialist people around one. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

The love of all people except the French people, is deep in the mind of the great doctors of the French Republic. ~ Charles Maurras

Antiwhite racism is developing in sections of our cities where individuals - some of whom have French nationality - contemptuously designate French people as gaulois on the pretext they don't share the same religion, color or origins. ~ Jean-Francois Cope

Washington is dead! This great man fought against Tyranny; he established the liberty of his country. His memory will always be dear to the French people, as it will be to all free men of the two worlds; and especially to French soldiers, who, like him and the American soldiers, have combated for liberty and equality. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

French people are charming, adorable but not extremely generous with foreigners, but they believe in what they do. I feel proud in exchange because what I did in restoration is something I did for La France. ~ Valentino Garavani

The odious little dogs that French people seemed to like so much rushed out at him as he rode by, barking furiously. ~ Paul Bowles

An observation that people who live permanently in an adoptive country tend to progressively generalize the bad and particularize the good, that is, attribute the bad traits in people they encounter to the national trait of the natives, and the good things to the individual.
This holds equally well for French people living in the U.S. as it does for Americans living in France. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

JJ informed me, when he dropped them off, that they are French bulldogs, which has led med to reassess my opinion of the French. They may know a lot about making wine and fries, but they don't know jacques-merde about making dogs. ~ Melissa DeCarlo

In my town, and especially in my area, there were people from everywhere: Algerians, Senegalese, French people, Asians, all kinds of immigrants and natives, and everyone circulated. ~ Tahar Rahim

What everyone agreed was not very nice, was the way Clémence had carried on. Obviously, she wasn't the kind of girl you'd ask again: she'd ended up showing off everything she'd got, and she'd puked all down one of the muslin curtains and completely ruined it. At least the men did go into the street to do it; Lorilleux and Poisson, when they felt queer, managed to dash as far as the pork-butcher's shop. Breeding always tells. ~ Emile Zola

French people are strange about America, I think. ~ Michel Hazanavicius

In Paris you're always surrounded by French people. ~ David Sedaris

The murders in Paris are sickening, we stand with the French people in the fight against terror and defending the freedom of the press. ~ David Cameron

Gordy," I said. "I need to talk to you."
"I don't have time," he said. "Mr. Orcutt and I have to debug some PCs. Don't you hate PCs? They are sickly and fragile and vulnerable to viruses. PCs are like French people living during the bubonic plague."
Wow, and people thought I was a freak.
"I much prefer Macs, don't you?" he asked. "They're so poetic. ~ Sherman Alexie

I just love France, I love French people, I love the French language, I love French food. I love their mentality. I just feel like it's me. I'm very French. ~ Olga Kurylenko

I was supposed to stay for 3 months. But I think I always knew I would stay a little longer, despite the crazy Frenchies. Or maybe because of them. ~ Vicki Lesage

I went to Brown to be a French professor, and I didn't know what I was doing except that I loved French. When I got to Paris and I could speak French, I know how much it helped me to establish relationships with Karl Lagerfeld, with the late Yves St. Laurent. French, it just helps you if you're in fashion. The French people started style. ~ Andre Leon Talley

French people should be prioritised; clandestine immigrants get 100 per cent refund on healthcare while two-thirds of French people can't afford medical help. Charity begins at home. ~ Marion Marechal-Le Pen

I remember when Lindbergh arrived in Paris, I was one of the first persons to know about his landing, because as the French people know that I was born in St. Louis, thinking I would be very proud to announce it to the public, they gave me the news first. I was then starring in the 'Folies Bergere.' ~ Josephine Baker

[The eighteenth century] was the century, as we are frequently told, of women - the intellectual life of women in salons, women wielding unseen influence, women as members of academies, theatrical productions whose success depended on the power of actresses to charm; in the economic sphere, financiers amassing great fortunes in order to marry their daughters into the aristocracy, and women ruling over whole peoples and empires: Maria Theresa, Catherine the Great, Queen Elisabeth Farnese of Spain, as well as the likes of Mme du Pompadour and Mme du Barry. It was as if some residual matriarchy - the oldest culture of the Mediterranean - was struggling to emerge from the blood and the collective unconscious; as if the time would one day return when, in every tribe, it was the women who possessed wealth and power and the men who 'married out', moving into the wife's extended family, where they became gentle, pampered, more or less superfluous drones. [...] In the century of women, it was inevitable that these erotic legends should attach themselves to the outstanding female figures of the time [...] and all this applied even more strongly in France. It was there that women reached the greatest positions of power, and there that this erotic momentum was at its strongest, by virtue of the traditions and nature of the French people. ~ Antal Szerb

People have a good image of me. It's not these tramps who are going to tarnish my image. They should stop lying to the French people. It annoys me that people talk about 'your image'. My image is great in France. When I'm abroad, I don't even talk about it. But in France it's just these people, these parasites. ~ Patrice Evra

The French people have chosen change. This change I will put into place. ~ Nicolas Sarkozy

They came from the four corners of the earth, driven by hunger, plague, tumors, and the cold, and stopped here. They couldn't go any futrther because of the ocean. That's France, that's the French people. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

It's easy to forget how central the French people are in everything we mean when we say Europe. ~ John Dos Passos

Well, I think they're going to learn that an awful lot of French people changed their minds. In 1940, the Third Republic had made a miserable mess of it. ~ Robert O. Paxton

I rejoice that liberty ... now finds an asylum in the bosom of a regularly organized government; a government, which, being formed to secure happiness of the French people, corresponds with the ardent wishes of my heart, while it gratifies the pride of every citizen of the United States, by its resemblance to their own. ~ George Washington

When seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary Paul Le Jeune lectured a Montagnais Indian man about the dangers of the rampant infidelity he'd witnessed, Le Jeune received a lesson on proper parenthood in response. The missionary recalled, "I told him that it was not honorable for a woman to love any one else except her husband, and that this evil being among them, he himself was not sure that his son, who was there present, was his son. He replied, 'Thou hast no sense. You French people love only your own children; but we all love all the children of our tribe.'"5 ~ Christopher Ryan

A French conversation starter is more subtle. Work is considered boring, money is out of the question, politics comes later (and only in like-minded company). Vacation is a safe bet - it's no exaggeration to say that French people are always going on, returning from, or planning a holiday. But more often than not, social class in France is judged by your relationship to culture. ~ Elizabeth Bard

I once waited on a group of 10 people, and one guy collected the money from the check and tipped me $20 on $600. I told him in front of everyone, 'Jews like you give Jews like me a bad name.' That was my last waitressing job. ~ Chelsea Handler

In the Marine Corps, you meet this really broad segment of the country; you're working with people from all kinds of backgrounds. And it exposes you to the American military, particularly the American military at war. ~ Phil Klay

Here was a people. A family. A faith.
Her people. Her family. Her faith.
Here was a silence broken. ~ Ryan Graudin

I knock on Grace's door twenty minutes later, ordering myself to keep the gloating to a minimum. But damn, I'm feeling pretty fucking gloaty about the way I've successfully fulfilled all of her demands. It really is a shame that people don't grasp what a stubborn motherfucker I am. ~ Elle Kennedy

I have a generally optimistic temperament and am thrilled by what I see as a rapidly growing food movement, especially among young people who care about how food is produced and what it does to their health and the environment. ~ Marion Nestle

But I didn't realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people. ~ Sigrid Undset

If the Scottish people decide to opt for independence, it would not be a good idea for Scotland to maintain a very rigid link to the pound. ~ Mohamed El-Erian

I've never been too afraid of what other people have said, especially when I was younger, but I suppose that was the arrogance of youth. ~ Francesca Annis

The more people explore the world, the more they realize in every country there's a different aesthetic. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. ~ Helena Christensen

I will never leave China, unless I am forced to. Because China is mine. I will not leave something that belongs to me in the hands of people I do not trust. ~ Ai Weiwei

It's one thing when other African-Americans try to threaten my race card, but when people outside of my ethnicity have the audacity to question how 'down' I am because of the bleak, stereotypical picture pop culture has painted for me as a black woman? Unacceptable. ~ Issa Rae

It is easy to be critical of the micromanaging many managers resort to, yet we must acknowledge the rock and the hard place we often place them between. If they have to choose between meeting a deadline and some less well defined mandate to "nurture" their people, they will pick the deadline every time. ~ Ed Catmull

We're really awful animals. I mean, that dumb Barbra Streisand song, 'People who need people are the luckiest people in the world' - she's talking about cannibals. Lot's to eat. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

In my community there were two groups of people, There were the ones who did not die and the ones who came back to life. ~ Esther Perel

The punchline of the story relates to an American academic saying of Beckett, 'He doesn't give a fuck about people. He's an artist.' At this point Beckett raised his voice above the clatter of afternoon tea and shouted, 'But I do give a fuck about people! I do give a fuck! ~ James Knowlson

Problem with these other niggas they aint never real ~ Drake

There's a saying that goes something like: 'We are all one drink or pill away from addiction,' and I know this is meant to destigmatize what addicts go through, but I feel like I've been seeing variations on this 'common knowledge' more and more lately being used (on social media) as a cudgel to remind patients to not overdo it," Anna says, speaking to the dual-edged sword of awareness. A motto designed to humanize the experience of addiction has been turned into a weapon that targets people who rely on opioids for pain management, and that translates to real-world stigma. ~ S. E. Smith

The government can spy on people using their mobile phones while they're with their wives and husbands. ~ John McAfee

We all distrust people we don't know; it's instinctive. This is why to be a Christian demands that we stretch well beyond what is natural, beyond what is instinctive. ~ Sandhya Rani Jha

But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming "the people" has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible - this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

...Learn to concentrate, to give all your attention to the thing at hand, and then to be able to put it aside and go on to the next thing without confusion.
My husband said that being President of the United States meant that you saw more kinds of people, took up more subjects, and learn more about a variety of things than anyone else. But it required complete concentration on the person you were with and on what he was saying. When that person left the room, you pulled down a shade in your mind, and you were ready, with your attention free, for what the next person had to say. You might have to shift from banking to forestry, but each subject had the attention and concentration it required and each, in turn, was put in the back of the mind, ready to be called upon when needed. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The corruption of freedom is in proportion to the moral deterioration of the people. For a people who have lost their sense of self-respect have no need for freedom. And the income tax, by transferring the property of earners to the State, has disintegrated the moral fiber of Americans to such a degree that they do not even recognize the fact. ~ Frank Chodorov

She recalled him as a forceful and witty speaker with a ready repartee and a penetrating voice. He had once, for example, put down a spokesman for the pesticide industry with a remark that people still quoted at parties: And I presume on the eighth day God called you and said, 'I changed my mind about insects! ~ John Brunner

People are murdering each other without any recourse ... So we need to get in our communities and work from the inside out. ~ Russell Simmons

Authentic disciples love God, love people, and reproduce spiritually. These are the marks of Kingdom-minded men and women. They are consumed with love and purpose. ~ Bo Chancey

Don't be silly. People never stop looking for love.
Yeah, some of them don't even stop AFTER they've found it. ~ Teresa Medeiros

She increases her burden of self-hatred, she behaves destructively with people she loves. ~ Susan Sontag

I think Michael Moore is an amazing man - an amazing, brave man. And I think people are probably going to start saying, 'Don't associate with Cindy Sheehan.' People who speak truth to power somehow are marginalized in this country. ~ Cindy Sheehan

I want to help communities put welfare recipients to work right now, without delay, repairing schools, making their neighborhoods clean and safe, making them shine again. There's lots of work to be done out there. Our cities can find ways to put people to work and bring dignity and strength back to these families. ~ William J. Clinton

I love being honest and intimate with people. I love building community. I love emailing with readers. ~ James Altucher

I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It's never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting "Forward, brave comrades!" you'll see he's the one behind the bloody big rock and the wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet! ~ Terry Pratchett

People don't trade money for things when they value their money more highly than they value the things. ~ Roy H. Williams

Bands that have positive lyrics that give people hope, I applaud them, you know I think we need to see more bands come out like that. I think it is great. ~ Michael Sweet

Success-minded people know that the greatest enemy to today's success is yesterday's success. ~ John Patrick Hickey

I have cultivated a little crew of people whose opinions I understand. It's like the way you'd follow certain film critics because you know what their criteria are, and you may not agree with them, but you can glean from their opinion how you will feel about a film. ~ Daniel Clowes

Good acting is good acting, however you learn it. Some people who haven't studied are amazing. Some people like Leonardo DiCaprio are naturally gifted - he's learned technique by working with people early on. ~ Sam Rockwell

The real problem has to do with the inability by people to admit that a position they've held a long time might be wrong. That's all. Not that it is. Just that it might be. I don't know why it is, but we tend to fall in love with things we believe, Threaten them, and you threaten us. ~ Jack McDevitt

E was simply a man who had gone even further into loneliness than others - and that's a real exploit, by the way; where breaking records in loneliness is concerned, we're all champions in the field ... he continually repeats: dogs are not enough anymore. People feel so damned lonely, they need company, they need something bigger, stronger, to lean on, something that can really stand up to it all. Dogs aren't enough; what we need is elephants ... ~ Romain Gary

France loves American cinema because when an American remake is successful, it makes us money to produce more French films. ~ Clotilde Hesme

What is the disposition which makes men rejoice in good bargains? There are few people who will not be benefited by pondering over the morals of shopping. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

You have to distinguish between two things - the Swedish economy and the Swedish stock market. The Swedish economy is the sum of all the goods and services that are produced in this country every day. There are telephones from Ericsson, cars from Volvo, chickens from Scan, and shipments from Kiruna to Skovde. That's the Swedish economy, and it's just as strong or weak today as it was a week ago ...
The Stock Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn't have a thing to do with the Swedish economy. ~ Stieg Larsson

Through continual exposure to people and by attempting to think inside of them we can gain an increasing sense of their perspective, but this requires effort on our part. ~ Robert Greene