mayors-from-france

"Violence and intimidation against our elected representatives are a red line in our democracy."

"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."

"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."

"That Hindu astronomical lore about ancient times cannot be based on later back-calculation, was also argued by Playfair’s contemporary, the French astronomer jean-Sylvain Bailly: “The motions of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the [modem] tables of Cassini and Meyer. The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as that discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also the Arabs.”"

"The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus some 4500 years before vary not even a single minute from the modern tables of Cassini and Meyer."

"Even before Jones's announcement, Bailly stated that "the Brahmans are the teachers of Pythagoras, the instructors of Greece and through her of the whole of Europe" (51)."

"‘Mons. Bailly, the celebrated author of the History of Astronomy, may be regarded as beginning the concert of praises, upon this branch of the science of the Hindus. The grounds of his conclusions were certain astronomical tables; from which he inferred, not only advanced progress in the science, but a date so ancient as to be entirely inconsistent with the chronology of the Hebrew Scriptures. [...] Another cause of great distrust attaches to Mons. Bailly, Voltaire, and other excellent writers in France, abhorring the evils which they saw attached to catholicism, laboured to subvert the authority of the books on which it was founded. Under this impulse, they embraced [...] the tales respecting the great antiquity of the Chinese and Hindus as disproving, entirely, the Mosaic accounts of the duration of the present race of men. [...] The argument [...] by Mons. Bailly, was [...] for a time regarded as a demonstration in form of the falsehood of Christianity.’"

"The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest, and that from which the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews derived Hindus their knowledge."

"The astronomer and onetime mayor of Paris, Jean-Sylvain Bailly, in his Histoire de I'astronomie ancienne et moderne (1805), felt that "these tables of the Brahmana are perhaps five or six thousand years old" (53;). Bailly approved of the traditional date of the Kali Yuga, and seemed to have convinced at least some of his colleagues such as Laplace and Playfair of the accuracy of the Indian astronomical claims (Kay, [1924] 1981, 2). This was bitterly opposed by another astronomer, John Bentley ([1825] 1981), with a concern that we have seen was typical for the times: "If we are to believe in the antiquity of Hindu books, as he would wish us, then the Mosaic account is all a fable, or a fiction" (xxvii)."

"‘It follows, therefore, that the astronomers of Alexandria take from the Indians the primitive and fundamental knowledge of the theory of the moon.’"

"These observations must therefore have been made elsewhere, and one can hardly refuse to believe that they were made in India where the Chaldeans seem to have borrowed the first elements of their Astronomy."

"It time to declare Salafism outlawed. As sectarian drift, or as affecting the fundamental interests of the Nation, choose the safest way."

"I don't buy the prevailing theory that capitals are becoming increasingly Left-wing, they are in full globalisation and reconstruction mode, with huge tectonic shifts, a fusion of cultures. Whoever has the vision and personality to run such world cities is the right person. It's less about the political card you carry."

"I don't mind London being so attractive to the French, but what I don't want is for there to be a widening gap between the two where London is attractive and Paris less so. I want it to be self-evident that Paris is the place to be. If you leave for a professional opportunity, that is understandable, but to leave because you have the impression you can't succeed where you are, can't live in your life, that's a different matter."

"Have you ever tried to take the metro with a pushchair? I have two small boys. It's a nightmare, you can't replace that with a vélib [Mr Delanoë's bike rental scheme]. Lots of middle-class families with children are obliged to leave, due to economic and housing issues. The Left denies it, but more and more are going out to the suburbs."

"I have always got on well with Rachida, She's someone who has all sorts of qualities, an incredible energy, an important presence. She leaves no one indifferent."

"My only fight is for Paris."

"You have to decide whether you want to take part in politics or not. We're a republic, not a monarchy, and the partner should be like in Germany, where Angela Merkel's companion is rarely mentioned."

"Salafism, which has destroyed and perverted a part of the Muslim world, is a threat for Muslims, and also a danger for France."

"Nous avons changé d’époque, la France doit vivre avec le terrorisme, mais nous ne céderons pas à la menace terroriste, nous devons faire bloc, être solidaires. La France a été une nouvelle fois frappée dans sa chair"

"There is no definition of cults in law. on the other hand, these organizations know perfectly evade justice by hiding their true nature, since you are aware that freedom of conscience in France is a fundamental freedom enshrined in all our principles and our texts."

"I say also: watch (…) to any signs that would suggest that there a disempowerment. That those who plunge into Salafism are somehow victims of a great handling as regards sects. No, there is also that part of personal will that you should never rule out."

"Concevons qu’on ait dressé un million de singes à frapper au hasard sur les touches d’une machine à écrire et que, sous la surveillance de contremaîtres illettrés, ces singes dactylographes travaillent avec ardeur dix heures par jour avec un million de machines à écrire de types variés. Les contremaîtres illettrés rassembleraient les feuilles noircies et les relieraient en volumes. Et au bout d’un an, ces volumes se trouveraient renfermer la copie exacte des livres de toute nature et de toutes langues conservés dans les plus riches bibliothèques du monde. Telle est la probabilité pour qu’il se produise pendant un instant très court, dans un espace de quelque étendue, un écart notable de ce que la mécanique statistique considère comme la phénomène le plus probable."

"Quels que soient les progrès des connaissances humaines, il y aura toujours place pour l'ignorance et par suite pour le hasard et la probabilité."

"Just as Borel, the pure mathematician interested in probability and statistics, had no counterpart in England so Keynes, the logician-economist, had no counterpart in France."

"Si on me presse de dire pourquoi je l'aimais, je sens que cela ne se peut exprimer qu'en répondant: parce que c'était lui; parce que c'était moi."

"We were halves throughout, and to that degree that, methinks, by outliving him I defraud him of his part."

"All the opinions of the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end."

"Combien de choses nous servoyent hier d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?"

"Accustom him to every thing, that he may not be a Sir Paris, a carpet-knight, but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young man."

"Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux."

"Every rich man is avaricious, in my opinion."

"Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head."

"Je ne dis les autres, sinon pour d'autant plus me dire."

"Whatever can be done another day can be done today."

"Un peu de chaque chose, et rien du tout, a la française."

"To call out for the hand of the enemy is a rather extreme measure, yet a better one, I think, than to remain in continual fever over an accident that has no remedy. But since all the precautions that a man can take are full of uneasiness and uncertainty, it is better to prepare with fine assurance for the worst that can happen, and derive some consolation from the fact that we are not sure that it will happen."

"He who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live."

"I live from day to day, and content myself with having enough to meet my present and ordinary needs; for the extraordinary, all the provision in the world could not suffice."

"All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate."

"I am angry at the custom of forbidding children to call their father by the name of father, and to enjoin them another, as more full of respect and reverence, as if nature had not sufficiently provided for our authority. We call Almighty God Father, and disdain to have our children call us so. I have reformed this error in my family.—[As did Henry IV of France]—And 'tis also folly and injustice to deprive children, when grown up, of familiarity with their father, and to carry a scornful and austere countenance toward them, thinking by that to keep them in awe and obedience; for it is a very idle farce that, instead of producing the effect designed, renders fathers distasteful, and, which is worse, ridiculous to their own children."

"Mon métier et mon art, c'est vivre."

"Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness."

"C'est une épineuse entreprise, et plus qu'il ne semble, de suivre une allure si vagabonde que celle de nôtre esprit; de pénétrer les profondeurs opaques de ses replis internes; de choisir et arrêter tant de menus de ses agitations."

"Virtue refuses facility for her companion ... the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road."

"For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received no offence at all."

"Que sais-je?"

"It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune."