French Quotes

Had we not faults of our own, we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.

Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.

Every citizen is king under a citizen king.

Violence is man re-creating himself.

For the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.

He who is reluctant to recognize me opposes me.

There is a point at which methods devour themselves.

Fervor is the weapon of choice of the impotent.

I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.

However painful it may be for me to accept this conclusion, I am obliged to state it: for the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.

The common people have no history: persecuted by the present, they cannot think of preserving the memory of the past.

Let us turn elsewhere, to the wasps and bees, who unquestionably come first in the laying up of a heritage for their offspring.

Let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace.

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

We have within us, from the start, that which will distinguish us from the vulgar herd.

We on the left who are pro-European and Internationalist wish to unite the peoples under a social model.

This revision of the Constitution will not be perfect. But at least the Constitution will not be inflexible. It will be a step towards the Social Europe which we wish.

This assumes an upward revision of the European Budget, which is precisely what Jacques Chirac refuses to do. On the contrary, he has demanded a reduction.

There are 20 million unemployed and what does the Constitution offer us in the Europe of 25, 27 and soon to be 30: policies of unrestricted competition to the detriment of production, wages, research and innovation.

The U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol endangers the entire process.

The single currency should allow the European Union, and therefore France, to balance its monetary strength with the United States. It should help us adjust to the development of China.

The demographic weight of countries such as China and India exercise a massive pressure on our wages and salaries. They have accomplished massive technological advances and the revolution in information technology has reduced the costs of transport.

Shopkeepers are not bankers.

I want to make an extremely strong appeal to those who abstained. Vote. It takes five minutes and then it's for five years.

I am a partisan and artisan of Europe. But I draw the lessons of my experience in government.

France on its own cannot impose its point of view. But neither should it give up on its demands. With a clear vote for change France will be in a strong position.

For a long time many believed that there would be an automatic adjustment and counted on a rapid increase in the wages of the emerging nations, on our advances in technology and the costs of transport preventing disruption. But this reassuring analysis is out of date.

But Maastricht was not the end of history. It was a first step towards a Europe of growth, of employment, a social Europe. That was the vision of Francois Mitterrand. We are far from that now.

At the same time the Constitution sets in stone the Stability Pact and risks preventing member States from implementing a policy of growth. So we are not able to do things at the European or the national level.