Charles de Gaulle Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Genius sometimes consists of knowing when to stop.

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 better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

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

Gentlemen, I am ready for the questions to my answers.

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

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

When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. We are angry at each other much of the time.

One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day was; one cannot judge life until death.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.

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

France has no friends, only interests.

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

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

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