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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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?”

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

“To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.”

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

“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.”

“I was France.”

“The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”

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

“The great leaders have always stage-managed their effects.”

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

“China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.”

“Never relinquish the initiative.”

“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.”

“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.”

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