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A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed — I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

— Georges Clemenceau

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Failure

More quotes by Georges Clemenceau

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

To me the scene possessed only the horror of a slaughter-house.

It is easier to make war than make peace.

The quantum of a hypothetical German civilization would not take us very far, because she is to-day still too close to barbarism.

Grandeur and Misery of Victory (1930)

A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he’s not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.

All Georges Clemenceau quotes →

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A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible.

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Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.

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Attribution

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