Skip to content

Politics, when it is an art and a service, not an exploitation, is about acting for an ideal through realities.

— Charles de Gaulle

Another quote →

Notes from Wikiquote

Press conference, June 30 1955. Quoted in "Le Général de Gaulle et la construction de l'Europe" (1967), pg 33.

Topics

Politics

More quotes by Charles de Gaulle

France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war.

France cannot be France without greatness.

Mémoires de guerre (1954)

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

Nothing builds authority up like silence, splendor of the strong and shelter of the weak.

Le Fil de l'épée (1932)

At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure.

All Charles de Gaulle quotes →

You may also like

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

Albert Einstein

Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Mao Zedong

Three-fourths of the Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state.

Benito Mussolini

Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.

Theodor Adorno The Authoritarian Personality (1950)

Attribution

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