France Quotations

I don't really believe in elegance. Ever since I first came to France many years ago to do the Chambre Syndicale course, I always felt I was somehow lacking, first of all being British - obviously a disaster! But I was also puzzled with this idea that you have to tie your Hermes scarf just right, or you can only wear black.

For the jihadists, Muslim women who embrace Western mores, and wear tight jeans or mini skirts, are hated symbols of corruption that need to be eradicated. For the ideological mentors of Breivik, a similar disturbance comes from the burqa, which is banned in France and Belgium, partly thanks to their efforts.

I would like to stress this point undoubtedly: France sees the Arab Spring as auspicious. The Arab Spring holds out tremendous hope - hope for democracy and the rule of law, hope for peace and stability, hope for better future in which every person can pursue goals commensurate with his or her needs, talents and ambitions.

I wanted to get far away from those who believed in cruelty, so then I went to France, a land of true freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity.

I speak on due consideration because Britain, France, and Mexico, have abolished slavery, and all other European states are preparing to abolish it as speedily as they can.

An important event in my scientific life has been my appointment as a Professor at the College de France in 1973.

The United Nations will be at the heart of our international activities. France will assume its full responsibilities at the Security Council by putting its status at the service of peace, respect for human rights and development.

If an Internet company steals content, they shut it down. And let me tell you, Apple France, Yahoo France or Google France, none of them have gone out of business.

I remember being this little girl missing her daddy and living so far away in France and from anything that was familiar to me. I felt so different and so isolated. When you're removed from everything that's familiar, you realize who you are.

Living in France while the Falklands War was going on, I felt a profound sense of shame and betrayal, just as I did by the war in Iraq. People have asked why I don't talk about that directly in my plays. Well, politics needs to be articulated in many different ways.

France has become the second-largest consumer of pizza per person, per pound, in the world, behind the United States and ahead of Italy.

In 1255, Louis IX of France presented an elephant to Henry III of England to add to the menagerie of exotic animals he kept in the Tower of London.

There aren't many great passages written about food, but I love one by George Millar, who worked for the SOE in the second world war and wrote a book called 'Horned Pigeon.' He had been on the run and hadn't eaten for a week, and his description of the cheese fondue he smells in the peasant kitchen of a house in eastern France is unbelievable.

In France the music schools are a bit old fashioned. I was more excited about doing my own stuff or to play with my friend in my band, than studying the piano.

In America it's good to show people you are fine, you're healthy, you're sporty, you're happy to do things, to live. And in France it's more like you don't have to show you have success.

When France resolved, along with England, to lend assistance in the legitimate defense of Poland, the realization burst on us that a conflict of awesome proportions was inevitable.

You are the eternal France, I love you.

Each country has a soul, and France's soul is equality.

We've been back since July, but I spent some time with the family in the south of France over the summer. We rented a house with another couple and took it easy.

How rich our German life is compared to France or England: what an abundance of social types and customs with completely different origins... Germany is a world, whereas England and France, with their stereotypically divided three social classes, are but enlarged villages... what a stage for a Balzac.

My father died in France, and my sisters and I went over with my mum to bring back his body. I remember going to the funeral parlour in France and being given a laminated menu of coffins, and thinking, surely there is an ice cream at the back of here!

The American movie, in part because America's a melting pot, the cultural hodgepodge that America makes, generates movies that have appeal across all international boundaries. And that's really not true for most domestic film industries. It's no longer true of France and Italy, less true than it used to be of the U.K.

I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone else through my fluency in the language.

In France, for instance, one magazine writer was convinced that On The Road had been a huge influence on Lost Souls and was crushed to learn that I hadn't read the one until after I'd written the other.

I defy anyone - and I have said this to the Germans - to build a solid, articulated, and viable Europe without France's consent.

If George W. Bush is elected president, I'm leaving for France.

I have an intense dislike for artificial society. In France, one could lead a free life - to do what one wanted to do without interference or criticism from one's neighbors.

I've never quite worked out how to do holidays. I've got a house in France which I suppose is a kind of holiday house. But it's really only so I can go on drawing when I get there. I'm never far away from the feeling that I want to be getting on with something.

This programme would only really make sense and work properly if it was also broadcast on France's international television channel TV5. So I ended up with a double production, on France 2 and TV5.

I was lucky to live 10 years in France, so I learned how to eat and drink there.

In France, we don't yet have the craft that American TV does or big studios like Paramount. It was so cool going through those famous gates when you have your own little pass and picture on it. Woo hoo, I'm going to work!

I stay in France. Better to be the queen of a village than a servant in a kingdom.

The Europeans must now honor their commitments. That is the position that France is defending.

I was a 'runaway girl' from France who married an American and moved to New York City. I'm not sure I would have continued as an artist had I remained in Paris because of the family setup.

When I was first writing, I was writing mostly about sporting events, which was really what my assignments were. I was working on the Tour de France bike race and the Barcelona Olympic Games, and those songs tend to be very big, very bombastic-type music, which is the type of music that I love to write.

I think at the end of the day, the real sick man of Europe is liable to turn out to be France, not Greece, not Portugal, not Spain, not Italy. The reason is France is very uncompetitive to begin with on a global scale, and the measures that Hollande has been putting in have been very, very negative from the point of view of economic growth.

I have no intention of going back to France, except for yearly visits to meet my family.

Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion.

In France, I learned about wine and cheese.

France loves American cinema because when an American remake is successful, it makes us money to produce more French films.

I understood from a very young age that school was important and that my parents were making great sacrifices for me. Every morning I saw my father get up and go to a job that he didn't really like. They came to France for the same reasons all immigrants move to another country - so their kids could have a better way of life.

Well, I grew up between Holland and Israel and then moved to France when I was eleven.

France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside.

I condemn what happened in Madrid, but it is suspicious. If tomorrow there will be another bombing, in France for example, who will gain power? Of course not Jacques Chirac, but Le Pen.

It is not really our country so much is the problem, it's sort of the parasitic relationship that Canada, and France, and other countries have towards us.

My country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims.

In France we have a saying, 'Joie de vivre,' which actually doesn't exist in the English language. It means looking at your life as something that is to be taken with great pleasure and enjoy it.

Workers of France, it is for the freedom of the prisoners that you will go to work in Germany! It is for our country that you will go in large numbers!

What Marie Antoinette was to eighteenth-century France, Mary Pickford is to twentieth-century America.

Well as I said in France I didn't get auditions, and it's very difficult to get an agent in France because they conduct the business in a strange way.

I hope to continue my friendship with France and its filmmakers for many years to come.

I am a peasant from the Auvergne. I want to keep my farm, and I want to keep France. Nothing else matters now.

There were ten concentration camps in France from 1939 on.

English people don't have very good diction. In France you have to pronounce very particularly and clearly, and learning French at an early age helped me enormously.

Godard is incredibly brilliant, the things he says. Apparently here in France, the most interesting thing when a new film of his is going to come out are his press conferences, because he's so brilliant

Oh, I was brought up in the north of France, and I had a very enjoyable childhood with my family working as entrepreneur.

The first condition of success for the League of Nations is, therefore, a firm understanding between the British Empire and the United States of America and France and Italy that there will be no competitive building up of fleets or armies between them.

Have we so soon forgotten those four years of terrible carnage, the greatest war of all time; forgotten the millions of men who gave their lives, who made the supreme sacrifice and who today, beneath the soil of France and Belgium, sleep the eternal sleep?

You know what happened, you know, in 1938: France, England, you know, just sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

In France, I would like to worth with Patrice Chereau, who made Queen Margot.

Everyone says Francois Mitterrand had huge charisma. But before he was president they used to call him badly dressed, old, archaic and say he knew nothing about the economy until the day he was elected. It's called universal suffrage. When you're elected, you become the person that embodies France.

Though, with the ascendancy of Louis, the political power of the nobles finally came to an end, France remained, in the whole complexion of her social life, completely aristocratic.

I am working as public relations director for the Tour de France and maintaining my farm.

In France we have a law which doesn't allow the press to publish a photo that you didn't approve. It lets the paparazzi take the picture, but if they publish this picture, you have the choice to sue the newspaper. So me, I always sued them.

I am and will remain a tax resident in France and in this regard I will, like all French people, fulfill my fiscal obligations.

The French never allow a distinguished son of France to lack a statue.

France will always be France no matter what, but America involves striving toward an ideal.

I have contacts with the Tour de France which keep me close to cycling.

France is the country with the highest taxes in Europe along with Sweden... something of which I am not proud.

My parents sent me to Montreal because I kept getting kicked out of school in France.

France and Italy have not yet signed this treaty or agreed to naval limitation as between those nations, but I have confidence that in time they will do so.

In France, a first lady has no status, and therefore she isn't supposed to do anything else.

As in all his subsequent dealings with France, Ho Chi Minh's demands were a model of modesty.

I think there is a problem in France that anyone who is not European, you want to know where they come from and why do they come from somewhere or why they speak English or why they are human. That's the big barrier for all of us that are coming from some far, far away countries. But at the end of the day, we are all artists.

The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.

So, thanks God, our films, our first films were suddenly being appreciated by the Western media; especially France was very good, and Switzerland was very good.

Of the love or hatred God has for the English, I know nothing, but I do know that they will all be thrown out of France, except those who die there.

I grew up in France, my first language was French, and I tend to gravitate towards French cooking.

I have recently started acting lessons in south France, and I intend to commence acting lessons at Rada.

People in France are very intrusive when they recognize you. In New York, they are very polite, with quick words, so it's great.

When you make a movie, you really have to be clever and smart, find something new for the worldwide audience because you aren't making a movie for just France or Germany; it's for everyone in the world.

I had to inspect all fighter units in Russia, Africa, Sicily, France, and Norway. I had to be everywhere.

Why does there exist a global American entertainment industry, but there isn't an equivalent coming from France or Italy? This is the case simply because the English language opens the whole world to the American cinema.

France was an occupied country, a country that surrendered and was left without the right to choose.

I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well.

We have a saying in France. A dog doesn't make a cat.

In France, I found there is a lot of attention to the little details and to the quality of life.

France has lost the battle but she has not lost the war.

For reasons I didn't understand, I felt I needed to learn how to cook the food of France and knew that I was going to have to get over to the country: to Paris, I'd always assumed.

In America, sex is preached; in France, it is done.

I did get offers from Hollywood, but they were all scripts with monsters in them. If I had done them, I would have disappeared. I would have come back to France anyway, and I would have had to start all over again and lost a lot of time.

Anyway, I collapsed in France in the middle of a tour. I hadn't been eating properly, I was getting very phobic about audiences, and I collapsed in pure fright.

I've always felt more at home in the UK than in France.

I'll tell you what I love. Sending back bottles of wine that aren't right in restaurants in France! Whoa! I love the French, but I do find their wine snobbery something unbearable.

I was in the invasion of Normandy in southern France.

I like France quite a lot, and I like Italy.

Otherwise, to be a movie star, it's a lot of compromise and also a lot of headaches. You can't do what you want. You become a prisoner of your fame. This happened to me in France and I don't want it.

'Orange Is the New Black' was by far the most watched show in both France and Germany and, in fact, all of the markets that we launched.

It's always great to have things from France at a wedding. It's symbolic of style, of culture, of taste.

To be successful in my native France, where people speak the same language and understand me, is nothing.