I always thought I was Jeanne d'Arc and Bonaparte. How little one knows oneself.
Charles De GaulleRead
How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?
Interpretation
This quote humorously suggests that governing a diverse and complex society is challenging.
Charles De Gaulle's quote playfully highlights the complexities and absurdities that come with governing a nation rich in diversity, using the metaphor of having 246 varieties of cheese to symbolize the multifaceted nature of society. It underscores the idea that a leader must navigate through various tastes, preferences, and cultural intricacies, making governance a daunting task.
In practice
In a speech about cultural diversity, one might quote this to emphasize the challenges of unity in diversity.
I always thought I was Jeanne d'Arc and Bonaparte. How little one knows oneself.
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.
Today we are crushed by the sheer weight of the mechanized forces hurled against us, but we can still look to the future in which even greater mechanized forces will bring us victory. Therein lies the destiny of the world.
The perfection preached in the gospels never yet built an empire. Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning.
One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day was; one cannot judge life until death.
Soyons fermes, purs et fidèles ; au bout de nos peines, il y a la plus grande gloire du monde, celle des hommes qui n'ont pas cédé. [Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give in.]
When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralyzed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures, and reduced to the existence of a jellyfish, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter - when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke.
I think if you come from a history of persecution you have to develop a sense of humour.
Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined.
As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.
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