France will become again what she should never have ceased to be—an essentially agricultural nation. Like the giant of mythology, she will recover all her strength by contact with the soil.

Another quote →

Source, in full

speech (August 1940), quoted in Pavlos Giannelia, 'France Returns to the Soil', Land and Freedom, Vol. XLI, No. 1, January-February 1941, p. 23 and Eugen Weber, 'France', in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber (eds.), The European Right: A Historical Profile (University of California Press, 1966), p. 113

More quotes by Philippe Pétain

All Philippe Pétain quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Philippe Pétain (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.