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

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

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

Maximilien Robespierre

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

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

Charles de Gaulle

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

We have a country which loves ideology, and we need pragmatism.

Jean-Pierre Raffarin

One is never weaker than when one appears to have everybody's support.

Émile Ollivier

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

Of France:

A nation of monkeys with the throat of parrots.

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès

Putin rejected the diplomatic path and chose the path of war. We will take full responsibility for defending the sovereignty of our allies.

Emmanuel Macron

I have always perceived, or nearly so, the defects of those I love; and such defects are the only ones I can see clearly. But for the want of archangels, we must love imperfect creatures.

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau

I have seen the Indian in his forests, and the Negro in his chains, and thought, as I contemplated their pitiable condition, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness; but I did not then know the condition of unfortunate Ireland...In all countries, more or less, paupers may be discovered; but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland.

Gustave de Beaumont

Remain steadfast in the faith; instruct yourself; bridle your tongue; repress your wrath; forbear to do evil; associate with the good; screen the faults of your neighbour; relieve the poor by your alms; and expect your reward in eternity.

Édouard René de Laboulaye

Woe to the man who in the first moments of a love-affair does not believe that it will last forever! Woe to him who even in the arms of some mistress who has just yielded to him maintains an awareness of trouble to come and foresees that he may later tear himself away!

Benjamin Constant

Nothing has ever remained of any revolution, but what was ripe in the conscience of the masses.

Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

After us the deluge.

Madame de Pompadour

The high contracting powers solemnly declare…that they condemn recourse to war and renounce it…as an instrument of their national policy towards each other…The settlement or the solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be which may arise…shall never be sought by either side except by pacific means.

Aristide Briand

Long, so long, have you held the warrior's black face Between your hands as if it glowed already with some deadly Twilight. From the hillside I have seen the sun set In the bays of your eyes. When will I see my country again, The pure horizon of your face? When will I sit again At the table of your dark breasts?

Léopold Sédar Senghor

It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder.

On the execution of the Duc d'Enghien

Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe

It time to declare Salafism outlawed. As sectarian drift, or as affecting the fundamental interests of the Nation, choose the safest way.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet

My name—an offense; my Christian name—humiliation; my status—a rebel; my age—the stone age. [The Rebel] My race—the human race. My religion—brotherhood. [The Mother]

Man is neither carnivorous nor herbivorous. He has neither the teeth of the cud-chewers, nor their four stomachs, nor their intestines. If we consider these organs in man, we must conclude him to be by nature and origin frugivorous, as is the ape.

Jean Pierre Flourens

The formation of planets is like a gigantic snowball fight. The balls bounce off, break apart, or stick together, but in the end they are rolled up into one enormous ball, a planet-ball that has gathered up all the snowflakes in the surrounding area.

Claude Allègre

For us the mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of life and death, we had found the freedom for which we were blindly groping and which was as necessary to us as bread.