Charles de Gaulle Quotes

54 Sourced Quotes

It is better to have a bad method than to have none.

Charles de Gaulle
In war, the policy of least exertion always risks being paid for dearly.

Charles de Gaulle
Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.
Recalled on leaving the presidency

Charles de Gaulle
Authority doesn't work without prestige, or prestige without distance.

Charles de Gaulle
Greatness is a road that leads toward something unknown.

Charles de Gaulle
I always thought I was Jeanne d'Arc and Bonaparte. How little one knows oneself.
Reply to speaker who compared him to Robespierre

Charles de Gaulle
The desire of privilege and the taste of equality are the dominant and contradictory passions of the French of all times.

Charles de Gaulle
The cabinet has no propositions to make, but orders to give.

Charles de Gaulle
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.

Charles de Gaulle
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?

Charles de Gaulle
Anything can happen someday, even that an act conforming to honour and honesty can end up, at the end of the line, as a good political decision.

Charles de Gaulle
On the death of his daughter, who suffered from Down's Syndrome:
And now she is like everyone else.

Charles de Gaulle
I am a man who belongs to no-one and who belongs to everyone.

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

Charles de Gaulle
Nothing builds authority up like silence, splendor of the strong and shelter of the weak.

Charles de Gaulle
The EEC is a horse and carriage: Germany is the horse and France is the coachman.
Of the European Economic Community

Charles de Gaulle
Justice which does not bear a sword beside its scales soon falls into ridicule.

Charles de Gaulle
When I want to know what France thinks, I question myself.

Charles de Gaulle
In literature, as in everything else, talent carries with it responsibility.
On his refusal to commute the writer Robert Brasillach's death sentence for collaboration during World War II

Charles de Gaulle
France cannot be France without greatness.

Charles de Gaulle
Since those whose duty it was to hold the sword of France have let it fall, I have picked up its broken point.

Charles de Gaulle
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.

Charles de Gaulle
War stirs in men's hearts the mud of their worst instincts. It puts a premium on violence, nourishes hatred, and gives free rein to cupidity. It crushes the weak, exalts the unworthy, and bolsters tyranny...Time and time again it has destroyed all ordered living, devastated hope, and put the prophets to death.

Charles de Gaulle
France was built with swords. The fleur-de-lis, symbol of national unity, is only the image of a spear with three pikes.

Charles de Gaulle
The man of character finds an especial attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities

Charles de Gaulle