Quotes By Charles De Gaulle

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

The great leaders have always stage-managed their effects.

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

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

You'll live. Only the best get killed.

France cannot be France without greatness.

One does not arrest Voltaire.

France has lost the battle but she has not lost the war.

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

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

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?

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

To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.

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

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.

Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

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

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

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

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.

China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.

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

Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.

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

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

How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?

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.

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

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

The leader must aim high, see big, judge widely, thus setting himself apart form the ordinary people who debate in narrow confines.