Charles de Gaulle

Charles-André-Joseph-Marie de Gaulle was a French military leader and statesman. During World War II, he reached the rank of Brigade General and then became the leader of the Forces Françaises Libres . Between 1944 and 1946, following the liberation of France from German occupation, he was head of the French provisional government. Called to form a government in 1958, he inspired a new constitution and was the Fifth Republic's first president, serving from 1958 to 1969.

Found 45 thoughts of Charles de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle

It will not be any European statesman who will unite Europe: Europe will be united by the Chinese.

I have come to the conclusions that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless.

The sword is the axis of the world and its power is absolute.

Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.

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.

Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.

The perfection preached in the Gospels never yet built up an empire. Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be forgiven him, indeed, they will be regarded as high qualities, if he can make of them the means to achieve great ends.

How do you govern a country which has 246 different kinds of cheese?

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

One cannot govern with 'buts'.

No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

You start out giving your hat, then you give your coat, then your shirt, then your skin and finally your soul.

We may go to the moon, but that's not very far. The greatest distance we have to cover still lies within us.

I have heard your views. They do not harmonize with mine. The decision is taken unanimously.

Old age is a shipwreck.

One does not arrest Voltaire.

Authority doesn't work without prestige, or prestige without distance.

You'll live. Only the best get killed.