Charles de Gaulle Men Quotations

The true statesman is the one who is willing to take risks.

I feel not a person but an instrument of destiny.

Leaders of men are later remembered less for the usefulness of what they have achieved than for the sweep of their endeavors.

Don't think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

Difficulty attracts the man of character because it is in embracing it that he realizes himself

These people really aim very badly.

The cemetery is filled with indispensable men.

Men can have friends, statesmen cannot.

Difficulty attracts the characterful man, for it is by grasping it that he fulfils himself.

Betting against gold is the same as betting on governments. He who bets on governments and government money bets against 6,000 years of recorded human history.

I am a man who belongs to no-one and who belongs to everyone.

Men are of no importance. What counts is who commands.

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.

Treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last.

A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.

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?

History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.

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 better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.

The future does not belong to men...

Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone.

The best of men / That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer, / A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, / The first true gentleman that ever breathed.

Brave shoemakers, all gentlemen of the gentle craft.