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The true statesman is the one who is willing to take risks.
When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself.
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.
I might have had trouble saving France in 1946 - I didn't have television then.
Whereas ordinary officers must be content with behaving correctly in front of their men, the great leaders have always carefully stage-managed their effects.
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.
Treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last.
Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.
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.
Never relinquish the initiative.
You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.
France cannot be France without greatness.
You start out giving your hat, then you give your coat, then your shirt, then your skin and finally your soul.
There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.
You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless.
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.
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 have heard your views. They do not harmonize with mine. The decision is taken unanimously.
No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.
France has lost the battle but she has not lost the war.
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