Quotes By Charles De Gaulle

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.

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

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.

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

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

I was France.

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?

Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.

Only peril can bring the French together. One can't impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 different kinds of cheese.

Never relinquish the initiative.

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

We are not here to laugh.

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

The true statesman is the one who is willing to take risks.

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

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

As an adolescent I was convinced that France would have to go through gigantic trials, that the interest of life consisted in one day rendering her some signal service and that I would have the occasion to do so.

When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself.

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

No nation has friends only interests.

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

One cannot govern with 'buts'.

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.

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

Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.

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

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

The sword is the axis of the world and its power is absolute.

You'll live. Only the best get killed.