Non Fiction Authors From France

"Une maison est une machine-à-habiter."

"The "styles" are a lie."

"Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the image of these is distinct and tangible within us without ambiguity. It is for this reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms. Everybody is agreed to that, the child, the savage and the metaphysician."

"The first deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call 'the information bomb' associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies. Thus, in the very near future, and I stress this important point, it will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means."

"The thing about collaborators is that you don’t know you are one whereas as a member of the resistance, you do. [In WWII,] the worst cases of collaboration weren’t among the real collaborators, that official militia, but among the people at large, who were collaborators without knowing it, by a sort of laxity, an apathy."

"Wealth is the hidden side of speed and speed the hidden side of wealth."

"All of us are already civilian soldiers, without knowing it…The great stroke of luck for the military class’s terrorism is that no one recognizes it. People don’t recognize the militarized part of their identity, of their consciousness."

"When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution... Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress."

"What he resists is not technology proper, but the propensity for us to confer upon technology a salvific function. Virilio, in other words, resists the mythologizing of technology, and he does so because it is precisely by idealizing technology that we come to unthinkingly embrace it."

"at the same time almost as much work is going into the development of the information bomb; a bomb that will have the same destructive effects on society's capacity to remember its past, a past that has a structure of its own and shapes the present."

"a caste of "technology monks" is being created in our times, and that there exist monasteries of sorts whose goal it is to pave the way for a new kind of "civilisation"; one that has nothing to do with civilisation as we remember it. The work of these technology monks is not carried out in the way that it was in the Middle Ages. Rather, it is carried out through the revaluation of knowledge, like that achieved for Antiquity. The contribution of monks to the rediscovery of Antiquity is well known... And with information monotheism comes what I think of as the greatest danger of all, the slide into a future without humanity."

"Cacher l’Art par l’Art lui même. Conceal Art by Art itself."

"In f-major, c* [a C major chord] is a sonority contained within the overtones of the tonic f* [a F major chord]."

"Therefore we well observe that the title of perfect cadence is attached only to a dominant that progresses to the main tone, because this dominant, which is naturally contained within the harmony of the main tone, seems, when it progresses to it, to return as if to its source."

"Though he was no judge of librettos, Jean-Philippe Rameau raised the musical side of opera to a new level and in his ballets introduced many novel descriptive effects – the French loved these – such as the earthquake in Les Indes galantes."

"The will to conquer is the first condition of victory."

"One does simply what one can in order to apply what one knows."

"A four years' war and the subsequent peace have divided Europe into two sections, the winners and the losers. The winners have even less reason to make war than in 1914. Peace will never be threatened by them. Does that hold true also of the losers? Have they resigned themselves to their defeat and the moral and material losses it entails? Who can say? Germany, for instance, was for centuries moulded in character and instincts by Prussia, who regarded war as a lucrative national industry; she will experience much difficulty in changing her mentality and outlook."

"Germany is about to join [the League of Nations]. It will be alleged that she conforms in spirit to that of the League. If you hope that she will desire to maintain the frontiers forced on her, which she has never acknowledged in her heart, and which, bluntly speaking, she loathes and yearns to destroy—if you can hope that, you must have more than your share of naïveté."

"[O]ur Allies proposed the disarmament of Germany. It cannot be too often asserted that such a step would give us a mere temporary, precarious, illusory security. It is practically impossible to prevent Germany from arming herself in secret."

"I bluntly remarked to M. Klotz, the Finance Minister: ‘With the treaty you have just signed, sir, you can expect with certainty to be paid in monkey tricks.’"

"The Rhineland question is controlled by the Rhine. The river is the deciding factor. The master of the Rhine is the master of the surrounding country. Whichever side does not control the Rhine has lost."

"[T]he treaty [of Versailles]...provided for a fifteen-year occupation of the Rhineland, with retreats every five years. Such a guarantee, I said without mincing my words, was ‘from the military point of view, null; it will merely be an increase of work for the Allied occupation.’ I went on to say that whereas the treaty was non-existent as promoter of our security, it was distinctly bad for reparations. ... I asked who would be judge of the situation if we sought to reoccupy the Rhineland because of an infringement of terms by Germany. The Commission for Reparations would not suffice, I said. It cannot be denied that I was right on this point."

"I stressed the importance always attached by Moltke to the Rhine question. I summarized his principle thus: ‘The bone of contention between Paris and Berlin is the Rhine; whichever holds the river is certain of dominating the other.’ ... To keep the 1914 frontier open to a menace aggravated by the destruction of Russia, and to expose France once more to the devastation she has suffered during the last five years, would be a crime against our country. There is only one remedy: the occupation of the Rhine."

"I was convinced then—and my conviction has not since faltered—that the Treaty [of Versailles] then in the making, which I was not allowed to modify, was bad for the safety of France. Very bad. It was full of flaws, it was fundamentally wrong, and cannot fail one day to have the worst results. On the day when it is apparent in all its evil, when France perceives that her interests were improperly defended, she will rise in deep anger against those who so imperfectly handled that defence."

"The Rhine is to-day a barrier indispensable to the safety of Western Europe—indispensable, therefore, to civilization. ... By renouncing the Rhine as a natural barrier, we should be conniving at an inconceivable, a monstrous situation. Germany would be able to continue her enterprises as though she had been victorious—the very Germany that has sent millions of human beings to death, the very Germany that planned to annihilate our country and leave her a heap of ashes, the very Germany that plotted to dominate the world by brute force—blood-stained, crime-stained Germany."

"I proposed a solid basis for the new, post-war Europe: Germany permanently bounded on the west by the Rhine, and the Rhine held by a small Allied force; the creation of an independent Rhineland State separating France from Germany, similar to England's creation of Belgium. ... What had we in place of that plan? A scheme for a hypothetical and conditional alliance by which, at best, we could receive no immediate military protection; and a temporary occupation, the main drawback of which was its indecisiveness."

"At the end of a war that cost them so much in men and money, I believed, and I still believe, that France and Belgium needed strongly-established frontiers to protect them for all time from any possible aggression on the part of Germany. Germany, by reason of her ever-increasing population and the militarist spirit that will always manifest itself—whether she be a republican or a monarchist Germany—constitutes a menace all the greater because there is no Russia to counterbalance her. The only natural barrier between us is the Rhine. Whoever holds its bridges is master of the situation; he can easily repulse an invasion, and, if attacked, carry the war into the enemy's territory. Any other frontier is bad for us, and can give us illusory safety, but not genuine security."

"There you have a country against which the Allies must take well-defined precautions. It is possible that its republican form of government will profoundly modify the German mentality. I devoutly hope so, but we cannot be sure. A well-organized, militarized Republic, however, might be as great a menace to its neighbours as the old Empire—although as yet we have no proof that the Republic can establish itself firmly in Germany."

"All her principles are based on one idea, namely: That right and morality are not the same for all, that there are privileged individuals who may deliver themselves from their shackles. It is a wicked theory; it cannot be too strongly opposed. From head to heel, Germany was tainted with this spirit. It assumed the importance of a dogma. ... The worst means were sanctified by her if used to this end."

"In dealing with Germany, you should never lose sight of the abominable manner in which she declared and waged the late War. Her conduct during the War was not accidental and unpremeditated. She followed a long-concerted plan. For many years her professors, philosophers and so-called thinkers, inculcated the theory that she was superior to all other countries, and therefore, had the right to do with them whatever she would. The rules of morality, apparently, did not apply to Germany."

"What you must do is to avoid the outbreak of war; do not tempt nations to become your adversaries. The best, indeed, the only means to this end are solid frontiers and an excellent army."

"The Prussian Army has no ideals, no true spiritual strength; neither has the whole nation. All they have is gross materialism. ... The German soul has a place for the glorification of brute force, for the notion of war as a colossal looting campaign. That is all it holds. It is not much."

"One single private soldier, and we would take good care that he was killed."

"Les avions sont des jouets intéressants mais n'ont aucune utilité militaire"

"If France has a firm hold of the Rhine, she may be at rest, for she can be sure of reparations and security; without the Rhine she has neither. All that may be offered or given in exchange is valueless, illusory, empty. That is the position I took up immediately. We must have the Rhine line; we want nothing more and will take nothing less."

"In my opinion the treaty [of Versailles] was a bad one, very bad for us. It assured to us neither of the two things to which we were entitled: reparations and security. I said so to anyone who was willing to listen and to many who were not."

"The military art is not an accomplishment, an art for dilettante, a sport. You do not make war without reason, without an object, as you would give yourself up to music, painting, hunting, lawn tennis, where there is no great harm done whether you stop altogether or go on, whether you do little or much. Everything in war is linked together, is mutually interdependent, mutually interpenetrating. When you are at war you have no power to act at random. Each operation has a raison d'etre, that is an object; that object, once determined, fixes the nature and the value of the means to be resorted to as well as the use which ought to be made of the forces."

"A war not only arises, but derives its nature, from the political ideas, the moral sentiments, and the international relations obtaining at the moment when it breaks out. This amounts to saying : try and know why and with the help of what you are going to act; then you will find out how to act."

"Far from being a sum of distinct and partial results, victory is the consequence of efforts, some of which are victorious while others appear to be fruitless, which nevertheless all aim at a common goal, all drive at a common result: namely, at a decision, a conclusion which alone can provide victory."

"The unknown is the governing condition of war."

"Men called to the conduct of troops should prepare themselves to deal with cases more and more varied upon an ever-increasing horizon of experience. They can only be given the capacity to arrive at a prompt and judicious position by developing in them through study their power of analysis and of synthesis; that is, of conclusion in a purely objective sense, conclusion upon problems which have been actually lived and taken from real history. Thus also can they be founded through the conviction that comes from knowledge in a confidence sufficient to enable them to take such decisions upon the field of action."

"Every manoeuvre must be the development of a scheme; it must aim at a goal."

"The truth is, no study is possible on the battle-field; one does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows. Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal and to know it well."

"This absence of similarity among military questions naturally brings out the inability of memory to solve them; also the sterility of invariable forms, such as figures, geometrical drawings (épures), plans (schémas), etc. One only right solution imposes itself : namely, the application, varying according to circumstances, of fixed principles."

"In war there are none but particular cases; everything has there an individual nature; nothing ever repeats itself. In the first place, the data of a military problem are but seldom certain; they are never final. Everything is in a constant state of change and reshaping."

"In a time such as ours when people believe they can do without an ideal, cast away what they call abstract ideas, live on realism, rationalism, positivism, reduce everything to knowledge or to the use of more or less ingenious and casual devices — let us acknowledge it here — in such a time there is only one means of avoiding error, crime, disaster, of determining the conduct to be followed on a given occasion — but a safe means it is, and a fruitful one; this is the exclusive devotion to two abstract notions in the field of ethics: duty and discipline; such a devotion, if it is to lead to happy results, further implies besides… knowledge and reasoning."

"To be disciplined does not mean being silent, abstaining, or doing only what one thinks one may undertake without risk; it is not the art of eluding responsibility; it means acting in compliance with orders received, and therefore finding in one's own mind, by effort and reflection, the possibility to carry out such orders. It also means finding in one's own will the energy to face the risks involved in execution."

"The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire."

"He (Clemenceau) broke off to confide in me sadly that General Pétain was contemplating the retreat of the French Army to the south while the British Army retired towards the north. Pétain, added Clemenceau, had given orders on this basis. Foch confirmed this last piece of information and told me of the order to retreat which Pétain had given. "The President of the Council (Clemenceau)," added Foch, "has only just lately begun to take part in military matters; he had accepted Pétain's point of view, but I declined to take any responsibility for it. I sent M. Clemenceau a note to tell him my views. Common sense indicates that when the enemy wishes to begin making a hole, you do not make it wider. You close it, or you try to close it. We have only got to try and to have the will; the rest will be easy. You stick to your ground, you defend it foot by foot. We did that at Ypres, we did it at Verdun." And Foch stuck to his point with the same energy before Clemenceau, the senator and the deputy."