Prime Ministers Of France

"M. Laval believed that world-wide peace hinged on keeping peace in Europe; that European peace hinged on cordial relations between France and Germany; and that France and Germany could work out their differences only if the British would refrain from interfering in European affairs in execution of their traditional balance-of-power policy... He envisioned a future where Europe would be more or less united, Russia would be thrust back into Asia, and the Anglo-Saxon world would lead an autonomous existence with the United States and France serving as the point of contact between the European and Anglo-Saxon world."

"He impressed me strongly as a man of directness and solidity of mind with whom it was possible to pursue a subject consecutively in a way which Englishmen understand."

"I desire the victory of Germany, for without it, bolshevism would tomorrow install itself everywhere."

"Whether, in the last resort, Germany wins the war or not, we now have less choice than ever. We must reach an agreement with her... I don't believe in the permanence or even the long life of Nazism. In fifteen or twenty years' time – and that's nothing in history – Europe will have a new thirst for freedom. If the French flame has been kept alight, albeit dimly, it is to her that they will come to rekindle the extinguished torches...for there will be no one else."

"I tried to organize peace in Europe and I thought that the first thing to do was to bring France and Italy together. I thought that this was the first link in a chain which would one day lead us to an agreement with Germany."

"I have always had simple ideas in politics. People take me for a shyster, but they don't know me. What I do is so simple that it looks to those who don't understand like something very complicated."

"Gamelin is absolutely useless. The troops are all underground in that wretched Maginot Line, and completely demoralized. They should be in armour, but we haven't got any... Their [the French people] heart is not in this war... Quite soon the Germans are going to attack us. They will defeat us in three weeks, and we shall have to surrender. I would like to avoid that. We have already given them central and eastern Europe, and that we cannot undo. If we accept that, they might leave us alone, at least for a time; and ultimately turn east. Meanwhile, if we are to avoid immediate disaster, we have no alternative but to come to terms with them."

"Because French-Italian cooperation had been destroyed Germany was in Vienna and in Prague. By turning their backs on his policy the French Governments had, since 1936, compromised the security of France and given to Germany the means, or at least part of the means, to capture the hegemony of Europe. In 1935, without a formal treaty, she had, in fact, become the ally of France. Although the Berlin-Rome Axis might be solid, and relations bad between Paris and Rome, M. Laval, nevertheless, could not finally acquiesce in a situation that was manifestly contrary to the interests of both countries."

"We must organize our continent and Europe will be weak or it will be strong. For it to survive, it must be constructed according to certain principles... The organization of all the countries which comprise our continent must be such that neither the conquerors nor the conquered are ever again tempted to rise up against one another. On the material plane, the countries must help one another and harmonize their economic interests so that the needs of each can be satisfied without recourse to the competition and violence which have too often been the rule of the past. The new Europe will last if the germs of revenge are forever eradicated from it."

"Well, it was unfortunate for us all that he [Ramsay MacDonald] refused to face the unpalatable fact of Abyssinia at Stresa, because Mussolini mistook his silence for agreement instead of imbecility; and his subsequent disillusion threw him into the arms of Germany, with the result that we lost Austria, and with it the whole of central Europe. Now, Mr. Boothby, I want to tell you that I think this war is a great mistake. If we had come to terms with Mussolini, as I wanted to do, we might have held Germany. That is no longer possible. We have given most of Europe to Hitler. Let us try to hold on to what we have got left. I am a peasant from the Auvergne. I want to keep my farm, and I want to keep France. Nothing else matters now... Make peace at once. Those people, have no idea of what they are up against."

"Since parliamentary democracy wished to enter into a struggle with Nazism and fascism and since it lost that struggle, it must disappear. A new régime – one that is bold, authoritarian, social and national – must take its place."

"What is going on is abominable. A cry of indignation goes up at such a situation. Today, Germany, who lost the war, has more territory than she had before 1914... I demand that the government should find the solution. But there's one which is impossible and that is to let Germany go on with what she's doing."

"I consider agreement between Italy and France, that is to say between the Latin countries, including Nationalist Spain as well, as my life's mission."

"War means the end of us all. Mankind is morally incapable of enduring another war, the horrors of which will surpass everything that has occurred hitherto. War would mean the end of Christian civilization."

"We will always be neighbours of Germany. We face the alternative of reaching an agreement with her or of clashing every twenty years on the battlefield."

"Just as war was originally waged between towns, then between countries and recently between empires, so, in future, it would be waged between continents. He did not believe in a Franco-German conflict...but sooner or later the Russians and the Chinese would launch an attack upon Europe. We had to make ourselves safe against this."

"Mr Chamberlain is right to refuse to intervene in Spain, just as he is right to re-establish good relations with Italy. I hope that my country will not delay too long in following England's example."

"There are two alternatives, either you agree to what we ask and model yourselves on the German and Italian constitutions, or Hitler will force you to do so... France has never had and never will have a more inveterate enemy than Great Britain. Our whole history bears witness to that. We have been nothing but toys in the hands of England, who has exploited us to ensure her own safety. Today we are at the bottom of the abyss where she led us... I see only one way to restore France...to the position which she is entitled: namely, to ally ourselves resolutely with Germany and to confront England together."

"It has been said that I lacked idealism, doubtless because I believed and still do believe that, while politics must not neglect the imponderables, it must be based upon realities, especially in the foreign field. Régimes follow one another and revolutions take place, but geography remains unchanged. We will be neighbours of Germany forever."

"It [a republic] is the form of government which divides us the least."

"What do you expect me to think of Thiers? There's no one who detested me more... Thiers was a man who firmly abstained from having an idea, who literally had no perception of anything. During the Commune he did the same as he had done in the Rue Transonain, and with the same ferocity. And not only did he do it, but he boasted and crowed about it. Did I tell you about the abominable act he committed? After having promised to leave the Parisians their guns, he took them away—which was the cause of everything that happened... He was one of those hide-bound fools who fancy that you can achieve something with an order written on a piece of paper."

"Thiers was the savage, limited type of bourgeois who steeps himself in blood without flinching."

"You should never hand over a country to one man, whoever the man, whatever the circumstances."

"It fell to the liberal statesman, academician, and historian Adolphe Thiers to forge this broader synthesis in his Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire (1845–1862). Begun under the July Monarchy, continued under the Republic, and concluded under the Second Empire, this 20-volume work sold more than a million copies, and established Thiers' reputation as France's "national historian" (as well as his fortune). The author was supremely well placed to produce such a work. From his early years at school in Marseilles he had been fascinated by Napoleon, and like many men of his generation his obsession with the Emperor continued well into his adult life. Bringing back Napoleon's remains for burial in Paris had been his idea, although he was out of office by the time the cendres were returned to Paris."

"He was...an intellectual lightweight. This is apparent in his voluminous histories of the Revolution, Consulate and Empire. He boasted that his books were the sensation of his century. Perhaps, but they are no longer read in our own. Thiers offered a well written, sometimes dramatic, narrative undistinguished by its depth of analysis. Intellectual or socio-economic influences upon history are absent from his work. His originality lay with the fact that he was the first to write of France's recent past in relatively dispassionate terms, not an easy task in his day, although he was unable to stifle his great admiration for Napoleon."

"Unlike the French government, Britain had no formal obligations to Czechoslovakia. A cardinal axiom of British foreign policy was not to get entangled in France’s alliance system in Eastern Europe, designed to threaten a resurgent Germany with war on two fronts. However, the French coalition government led by Édouard Daladier was itself bitterly split over Czechoslovakia, with one group willing to honor France’s obligations, another favoring peace at almost any price, and Daladier shifting uneasily between them. At root, a weakened and divided France would not go to war without Britain: for much of the Czech crisis, Paris therefore followed London—its “English governess,” in the words of one historian. And London, in essence, meant Neville Chamberlain, aged sixty-eight, who had succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister in May 1937."

"This pattern of Anglo-French mal-coordination, not helped by the divergence of domestic politics in the two countries when France briefly had a Popular Front government, was to continue until the outbreak of war. Even after the Anschluss, Chamberlain could not bring himself to utter more than the most ambiguous hint of support for France in the event of a continental war. Unfortunately, there was just as much ambiguity in the French position after Edouard Daladier became Prime Minister in April 1938, not least because of the habitual cowardice of Georges Bonnet, his Foreign Minister. In Asia, meanwhile, Britain simply could not choose between her interests in China and the need to avoid war with Japan. The British nightmare was a German-Italian-Japanese combination. Yet the more they sought to avert it by diplomatic expedients rather than military countermeasures, the more likely it became."

"If the blood of France and of Germany flows again, as it did twenty-five years ago, in a longer and even more murderous war, each of the two peoples will fight with confidence in its own victory, but the most certain victors will be the forces of destruction and barbarism."

"Two hundred families are masters of the French economy and, in fact, of French politics. They constitute a force which a democratic state should not tolerate, which Richelieu would not have tolerated in the kingdom of France. The influence of the two hundred families weighs heavily on the fiscal system, on transportation, on credit. The two hundred families place their delegates in the seats of power. They operate on public opinion, for they control the press."

"On the EU side, we had intense discussions with EU member states on the need to guarantee the integrity of the EU's single market, while keeping that border fully open. In this sense, the [Irish border] backstop is the maximum amount of flexibility that the EU can offer to a non-member state."

"[There are currently only two Brexit options - the PM's deal or no deal. Even if MPs decided to take no deal off the table, it would not stop it from happening unless there was] a positive majority for another solution."

"We are still not there. There are still several issues which remain unresolved, including that of Ireland, and therefore what I understand is that more time is required to find this comprehensive deal and to reach this decisive progress which we need in order to finalise these negotiations on the orderly exit of the United Kingdom."

"We are open to work on a permanent customs union should the UK decide to take this path"

"[The Chequers plan] is useful because it clearly defines what the wishes are for the UK for future relations."

"No deal was never our desire or intended scenario but the EU 27 is now prepared. It becomes day after day more likely."

"Everybody will have to pay a price - EU and UK - because there is no added value to Brexit. Brexit is a negative negotiation. It is a lose-lose game for everybody."

"Theresay May's plans] would be the end of the single market and the European project"

"It is not possible to get freedom for goods without freedom for services, in particular for the movement of people"

"The single market is our main economic public good. There will be no damaging it, no unravelling what we have achieved together with the UK."

"The EU is prepared to offer Britain a partnership such as there never has been with any other third country"

"Brexit was not our choice, it is the choice of the UK. Our proposal tries to help the UK in managing the negative fallout of Brexit in Northern Ireland in a way that respects the territorial integrity of the UK."

"We want EU citizens in Britain to have the same rights as British citizens who live in the EU"

"I'm not hearing any whistling, just the clock ticking."

"[A deal on the common travel area between the UK and Republic of Ireland must] respect both the integrity of the single market... and the Good Friday Agreement in all its parts"

"We must lift the uncertainty caused by Brexit"

"It's not about punishment, it is not about revenge. Basically, we are implementing the decision taken by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, and unravel 43 years of patiently-built relations. I will do all I can to put emotion to one side and stick to the facts, the figures, and the legal basis, and work with the United Kingdom to find an agreement in that frame of mind."

"There are extremely serious consequences of leaving the single market and it hasn't been explained to the British people."

"No deal will be a very bad deal."

"The UK's departure from the EU would have consequences"

"Being a member of EU comes with rights and benefits. Third countries (non members as the UK will be after Brexit) can never have the same rights and benefits since they are not subject to the same obligations. The single market and its four freedoms (which includes freedom of movement) are indivisible. Cherry picking is not an option."