A biography for Charles de Gaullehasn’t been written yet.
“In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.”
“Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.”
“A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.”
“Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.”
“China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.”
“No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.”
“The sword is the axis of the world and its power is absolute.”
“Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”
“Never relinquish the initiative.”
“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.]”
“The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
“The leader must aim high, see big, judge widely, thus setting himself apart form the ordinary people who debate in narrow confines.”
“France cannot be France without greatness.”
“France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war”
“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.”
“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.”
“For glory gives herself only to those who have always dreamed of her.”
“Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.”
“I have against me the bourgeois, the military and the diplomats, and for me, only the people who take the Metro.”
“In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?”