Politicians From France

"All that I know I learned after I was thirty."

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization."

"My son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then."

"La guerre! C’est une chose trop grave pour la confier à des militaires."

"Oh, to be seventy again!"

"I have come to the conclusion that force is right. Why is this chicken here? (pointing to his plate). Because it was not strong enough to resist those who wanted to kill it. And a very good thing too!"

"I do not know whether war is an interlude in peace, or whether peace is an interlude in war."

"Il est plus facile de faire la guerre que la paix."

"We need a barrier behind which, in the years to come, our people can work in security to rebuild its ruins. That barrier is the Rhine. I must take national feelings into account. That does not mean that I am afraid of losing office. I am quite indifferent on that point. But I will not, by giving up the occupation, do something which will break the willpower of our people."

"In fifteen years I will be dead, but if you do me the honour of visiting my tomb, you will be able to say that the Germans have not fulfilled all the clauses of the treaty, and that we are still on the Rhine."

"For you a hundred years is a very long time; for us it does not amount to much. I knew men who had seen Napoleon with their own eyes. We have our conception of history and it cannot be the same as yours."

"After expending the greatest effort, and suffering the greatest sacrifices in blood in all history, we must not compromise the results of our victory...if the League of Nations cannot buttress its orders with military sanctions we must find this sanction elsewhere...I beg you to understand my state of mind, just as I am trying to understand yours. America is far away and protected by the ocean, England could not be reached by Napoleon himself. You are sheltered, both of you; we are not."

"There are only two perfectly useless things in this world. One is an appendix and the other is Poincaré."

"His poor marksmanship must be taken into account. We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who misses his target 6 out of 7 times at point-blank range. Of course, this fellow must be punished for the careless use of a dangerous weapon and for poor marksmanship. I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery."

"Even as regards the military triumph of France over Germany, there are certain disquieting features in the situation. The Allies have taken over the German Navy and in a great measure disarmed the enemy, but Russia, certainly in a state of chaos, but fruitful all the same, remains and from it the Germans can draw a great deal of support. With the British Army demobilized, the American Army returned home, and France isolated, there might be a danger of Germany's reopening the debate of arms. This might embarrass us but for the very heartening assurances of President Wilson in the Chamber of Deputies. The League of Nations must be profoundly sustained by the conviction of the peoples of France and America and by the determination of the latter to abandon its traditional policy of isolation. France will face all these problems without fear and without reproach. All our plans are based on the splendid foundation laid by President Wilson."

"If it is said that the war is won, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that there is a lull in the storm. At the very least, it is necessary to provide for all eventualities. Recent discoveries have enabled us to pierce the enemy's designs to a greater extent than hitherto. They were not merely a dream of military domination on the part of Prussia, but a definite conspiracy expressly aiming at the extermination of France. Industrially France is extremely difficult to reconstruct, whereas Germany has kept her factories intact and ready to start working efficiently forthwith. Indeed, industrially and commercially, as between France and Prussia, the victory is the latter's. ... the war debt of Germany is almost entirely domestic and can easily be repudiated, while that of France must be paid. In the immediate future we shall have to pay regularly abroad immense sums, by way of interest solely, out of our internal resources."

"Mr. Wilson bores me with his Fourteen Points; why, God Almighty has only Ten!"

"War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory."

"I should lie if I said that I was at once in agreement with him [President Wilson] on all the points. America is far distant from the frontiers of Germany, as I remarked a little while ago. I have, perhaps, preoccupations which I would not say are foreign to him, but which do not touch him so closely as they touch the man who has seen his country devastated during four years by an enemy who was within several days of Paris."

"[France] finds herself at this time in a particularly difficult situation. ... It is the country which is nearest to Germany. America is distant; it has taken her a long time to get here. And during that time we have been put to it, we have suffered...our cities and our towns have been devastated. Everyone says, rightly, that 'it must not happen again'. I think so too. But how? There was an old system, which seems to be condemned today, and to which I do not fear to say that I remain a faithful adherent at this time. ... This system—solid frontiers...and balance of power—today seems to be condemned by certain very high authorities."

"[Clemenceau] said that the Rhine was a natural boundary of Gaul and Germany and that it ought to be made the German boundary now, the territory between the Rhine and the French frontier being made into an Independent State whose neutrality should be guaranteed by the great powers."

"The Germans may take Paris, but that will not prevent me from going on with the war. We will fight on the Loire, we will fight on the Garronne, we will fight even in the Pyrenees. And if at last we are driven off the Pyrenees, we will continue the war at sea."

"[If the Socialists want peace] so do I, but it is not by bleating of peace that we can silence Prussian militarism. A moment ago M. Constant complained of my silence about foreign policy. My foreign policy and my domestic policy are all one. Internal policy, I wage war; foreign policy, I still wage war; I still wage war. Russia betrays us; I continue the war: unfortunate Rumania is forced to capitulate; I continue the war, and I will continue it down to the last quarter of an hour."

"Mistakes have been made; do not think of them except to rectify them. Alas, there have also been crimes, crimes against France which call for a prompt punishment. We promise you, we promise the country, that justice will be done according to the law. ... Weakness would be complicity. We will avoid weakness, as we will avoid violence. All the guilty before courts-martial. The soldier in the court-room, united with the soldier in battle. No more pacifist campaigns, no more German intrigues. Neither treason, nor semi-treason: the war. Nothing but the war. Our armies will not be caught between fire from two sides. Justice will be done. The country will know that it is defended."

"The difficulty between us and Germany is this: that Germany believes that the logic of her victory means domination, while we do not believe that the logic of our defeat is serfdom [vassalité]."

"In the distance huge trees were still blazing, around us was a waste of ashes and of half-consumed boughs, and the falling rain seemed only to quicken the dying conflagration. In some of the great green boles were fearful gaping wounds through which the sap was oozing, while some tall trees still stretched to heaven their triumphant crown of foliage above a trunk all charred that would never sprout again. The Brazilians contemplate spectacles such as this with a wholly indifferent eye, and, indeed, even with satisfaction, for they see in the ruin only a promise of future harvests. To me the scene possessed only the horror of a slaughter-house."

"I think war is inevitable. We must do nothing to provoke it, but we must be ready for it; helped by Russia and England, doubtless by Spain also and perhaps by Italy as well, we may be able to win. In any case it will be a life and death affair: if we are beaten we will be crushed."

"No, my friend, Germany will not declare war on us [at this moment]. But in my opinion the European situation is such that a great armed conflict is inevitable at some time which I cannot foresee, and our duty is to prepare for the worst."

"It was I who gave the title "J'accuse" to Zola's letter."

"Whether we like it or not, whether it pleases us or shocks us, the French Revolution is a bloc ... a bloc from which nothing can be separated, because historical truth does not permit it. ... the Revolution is not finished, it is still continuing, we are actors in it, the same men are still in conflict with the same enemies. The struggle will go on, until the final day of victory, and until that day we will not allow you to throw mud at the Revolution."

"Bismarck is a dangerous enemy, but even more dangerous perhaps as a friend: he showed us Tunis, placing us in conflict with England, and is now negotiating with us over the Congo."

"The enemy is at the gates of the city. The day is perhaps not far off when our breasts will be the last defence for our country. We are the children of the Revolution. Let us take inspiration from our fathers of 1792, and, like them, we will conquer."

"Über Alles—there we have Germany, who professes to improve mankind by her ‘Kultur’ of iniquity; Russia writhes in the throes of internal decomposition, and Austria, who once fought to be free of the German monster, would to-day like to resume the old Bismarckian chain. The danger lies in the crowds who offer themselves for servitude in order that they may be permitted, in their turn, to tyrannize over the conquered nations. In this respect Germany's watchword is only the puerile hallucination of a return to primitive dominations, and allows no one to feign a misapprehension over which neither the aggressor nor the victim could be deceived. We have only to submit to the implacable law of the strongest, and join the ranks of the conquered territories, to enjoy the servitude with which our masters are only too ready to favour us. To be victims or tyrants, that is the only thing left to us."

"Can we then be excused for not accepting, without other guarantees than “faith sworn and forsworn,” these relations of good neighbourhood with the nation that proclaims itself the masterpiece of humanity? For has anyone in any authority ever tried to deny or tone down these bold and cynical words? Ask the mobs, whose first cry on every occasion is “Deutschland über Alles”. This is what our public men rely upon in recommending to us a peace of trust with a Germany animated by the sentiments her spokesmen have just disclosed."

"Whether we wish it or not, it is not the International Parliament of Geneva, subtle epitome of all the Parliaments of this world, with no executive powers, that will determine the peace of the future."

"From the German point of view the monstrous problem thus set must inevitably be solved by the apotheosis of the German peoples. In the meantime, far from ‘German culture’ seeming disposed to reform itself, we hear it proclaiming louder than ever a universal right to supreme domination, which confers on it the right of life and death over the nations, to be asserted and enforced by all possible means. Ought we not all to feel menaced in our very vitals by this mad doctrine of universal Germanic supremacy over England, France, America, and every other country?"

"And what is this “Germanic civilization,” this monstrous explosion of the will to power, which threatens openly to do away entirely with the diversities established by many evolutions, to set in their place the implacable mastery of a race whose lordly part would be to substitute itself, by force of arms, for all national developments? We need only read Bernhardi's famous pamphlet Unsere Zukunft, in which it is alleged that Germany sums up within herself, as the historian Treitschke asserts, the greatest manifestation of human supremacy, and finds herself condemned, by her very greatness, either to absorb all nations in herself or to return to nothingness."

"The depopulation plan behind Covid goes back at least to the 1970’s when Jacques Attali, still today a key adviser to the French government, said in a public interview, “Useless eaters are good for the slaughter-house.” Hence the dangerous and deadly “vaccinations.”"

"What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector."

"À chaque fois que la chasse recule, c'est le Coca-Cola qui s'avance."

"Citoyens, il est à craindre que la révolution, comme Saturne, ne dévore successivement tous ses enfants et n’engendre enfin le despotisme avec les calamités qui l’accompagnent."

"In order better to grasp the thought of Malthus, let us translate it into philosophical propositions by stripping it of its rhetorical gloss: — "'"Individual liberty, and property, which is its expression, are economical data; equality and solidarity are not." "Under this system, each one by himself, each one for himself: labor, like all merchandise, is subject to fluctuation: hence the risks of the proletariat." "Whoever has neither income nor wages has no right to demand anything of others: his misfortune falls on his own head; in the game of fortune, luck has been against him." From the point of view of political economy these propositions are irrefutable; and Malthus, who has formulated them with such alarming exactness, is secure against all reproach. From the point of view of the conditions of social science, these same propositions are radically false, and even contradictory."

"Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us? I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, — I mean a necessary dialectical tool."

"La République est l'organisation par laquelle toutes les opinions, toutes les activités demeurant libres, le Peuple, par la divergence même des opinions et des volontés, pense et agit comme un seul homme. Dans la République, tout citoyen, en faisant ce qu'il veut et rien que ce qu'il veut, participe directement à la législation et au gouvernement, comme il participe à la production et à la circulation de la richesse. Là tout citoyen est roi ; car il a la plénitude du pouvoir, il règne et gouverne. La République est une anarchie positive. Ce n'est ni la liberté soumise A l'ordre comme dans la monarchie constitutionnelle, ni la liberté emprisonnée DANs l'ordre, comme l'entend le Gouvernement provisoire. C'est la liberté délivrée de toutes ses entraves, la superstition, le préjugé, le sophisme, l'agiotage, l'autorité; c'est la liberté réciproque, et non pas la liberté qui se limite; la liberté non pas fille de l'ordre, mais MÈRE de l'ordre."

"Before entering upon the subject-matter of these new memoirs, I must explain an hypothesis which will undoubtedly seem strange, but in the absence of which it is impossible for me to proceed intelligibly: I mean the hypothesis of a God. To suppose God, it will be said, is to deny him. Why do you not affirm him? Is it my fault if belief in Divinity has become a suspected opinion; if the bare suspicion of a Supreme Being is already noted as evidence of a weak mind; and if, of all philosophical Utopias, this is the only one which the world no longer tolerates? Is it my fault if hypocrisy and imbecility everywhere hide behind this holy formula?"

"It is the general idea put forward by Proudhon in 1840 that unites him with the later anarchists, with Bakunin and Kropotkin, and also with certain earlier and later thinkers, such as Godwin, Stirner, and Tolstoy, who evolved anti-governmental systems without accepting the name of anarchy; and it is in this sense that I shall treat anarchism, despite its many variations: as a system of social thought, aiming at fundamental changes in the structure of society and particularly — for this is the common element uniting all its forms — at the replacement of the authoritarian state by some form of non-governmental cooperation between free individuals."

"Proudhon was a voluntary hermit in the political world of the nineteenth century. He sought no followers, indignantly rebuffed suggestions that he had created as system of any kind, and almost certainly rejoiced in the fact that he accepted the title anarchist in virtual isolation."

"Proudhon goes on to suggest that the real laws by which society functions have nothing to do with authority; they are not imposed from above, but stem from the nature of society itself. He sees the free emergence of such laws as the goal of social endeavour. ... Proudhon conceiving a natural law of balance operating within society, rejects authority as an enemy and not a friend of order, and throws back at the authoritarians the accusations leveled at anarchists; in the process he adopts the title he hopes to have cleared of obloquy."

"Like such titles as Christian and Quaker, "anarchist" was in the end proudly adopted by one of those against whom it had been used in condemnation. In 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, that stormy, argumentative individualist who prided himself on being a man of paradox and a provoker of contradiction, published the work that established him as a pioneer libertarian thinker. It was What Is Property?, in which he gave his own question the celebrated answer: "Property is theft." In the same book he became the first man willingly to claim the title of anarchist. Undoubtedly Proudhon did this partly in defiance, and partly in order to exploit the word's paradoxical qualities. He had recognized the ambiguity of the Greek anarchos, and had gone back to it for that very reason — to emphasize that the criticism of authority on which he was about to embark need not necessarily imply an advocacy of disorder. The passages in which he introduces "anarchist" and "anarchy" are historically important enough to merit quotation, since they not merely show these words being used for the first time in a socially positive sense, but also contain in germ the justification by natural law which anarchists have in general applied to their arguments for a non-authoritarian society."

"Proudhon, like the Communists, fights against egoism. Therefore they are continuations and consistent carryings-out of the Christian principle, the principle of love, of sacrifice for something general, something alien. They complete in property, only what has long been extant as a matter of fact — namely, the propertylessness of the individual. ... In this too Proudhon is like the Christians, that he ascribes to God that which he denies to men. He names him the Proprietaire of the earth. Herewith he proves that he cannot think away the proprietor as such; he comes to a proprietor at last, but removes him to the other world."