Quotes By Charles De Gaulle

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.

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

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

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

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

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

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

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.

Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone.

Old age is a shipwreck.

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

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

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

I was France.

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.

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

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

Never relinquish the initiative.

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.

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

We are not here to laugh.

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

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

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.

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

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.