French Politician Quotes

Napoleon I of France

Charles de Gaulle

Maximilien Robespierre

Emmanuel Macron

Nicolas Sarkozy

François Hollande

Napoleon III

In my opinion physicians kill as many people as we generals.

Napoleon I of France

Some audacity, more audacity, always audacity and the Fatherland will be saved!

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

Charles de Gaulle

Everyone sees drama from his own perspective. My father was killed by a German mine, while I lost other relatives in Allied bombing attacks. The Second World War claimed tens of millions of victims. For some the most terrible aspect of it was the deportations, while for others it was the leveling bombings or the mass deaths by starvation and cold.

Jean-Marie Le Pen

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

Cardinal Richelieu

It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis must die that the country may live.

Maximilien Robespierre

Friends, more often than you think, upon the spot
Where gleams the spangle, you will find the blot.

Antoine-Vincent Arnault

With each time hunting moves back, it is Coca-Cola that advances.

Roselyne Bachelot

It is only the dead who do not return.

Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac

It is magnificent, but it is not war; it is madness.

Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity.

François-René de Chateaubriand

Never make up with extremism, racism, antisemitism or rejecting whoever is different.

A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.

Georges Clemenceau

Federalism is a guideline, not a pornographic word, you can speak it out loud... We have been focusing too much on a country that has said no, no, no!

"It is more than a crime; it is a political fault," —words which I record, because they have been repeated and attributed to others.

As a child, on being asked by his older brother why he would not learn to read:

Because when I grow up I'm going to be a millionaire and hire someone to read for me.

James Goldsmith

When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.

Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette

I would rather have a Scot come from Scotland to govern the people of this kingdom well and justly than that you should govern them ill in the sight of all the world.

Louis IX of France

In the realm of human destiny, the depth of man's questionings is more important than his answers.

Five or six hundred [aristocratic] heads lopped off would have assured you repose and happiness; a false humanity has restrained your arm and suspended your blows; it will cost the lives of millions of your brothers.

Jean-Paul Marat

I believe in the forces of the spirit, and I won't leave you.

François Mitterrand

In politics evils should be remedied not revenged.

Citizens, by what illusion could one persuade himself that you are inhuman. Your Revolutionary Tribunal has condemned three hundred rascals to death in a year. Has not the Spanish Inquisition done worse than that... Have the English assizes butchered no one in that period?... What of the kings of Europe, does anyone prate to them of pity? Ah, do not allow yourselves to grow soft-hearted!

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

Joking about Emmanuel Macron:

He's a bit of a man and a bit of a woman, as he's in fashion now. Androgynous.

Nicolas Sarkozy

Of France:

A nation of monkeys with the throat of parrots.

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès