Georges Clemenceau quotes
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“All that I know I learned after I was thirty.”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : "And Madly Teach : A Layman Looks at Public School Education". Book by Mortimer Brewster Smith, 1949.
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“In order to act, you must be somewhat insane .A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : "Clemenceau. The Events Of His Life As Told By Himself To His Former Secretary Jean Martet". Translated by Milton Waldman, Chapter 12, 1930.
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“One begins to realize that art... in setting out to express nature with ever growing accuracy, teaches us to look, to perceive, to feel. The stone itself becomes an organic substance, and one can feel it being transformed as one moment in its life succeeds another.”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
“What can a mere French minister do when associated with Lloyd George, who thinks he is Napoleon, and Woodrow Wilson, who thinks he is Jesus Christ?”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
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“When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves he isn't a man of action.”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
“My home policy: I wage war; my foreign policy: I wage war. All the time I wage war.”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : Speech to French Chamber of Deputies, 8 Mar. 1918
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“On September 17, 1914, Erzberger, the well-known German statesman, an eminent member of the Catholic Party, wrote to the Minister of War, General von Falkenhayn, We must not worry about committing an offence against the rights of nations nor about violating the laws of humanity. Such feelings today are of secondary importance? A month later, on October 21, 1914, he wrote in Der Tag, If a way was found of entirely wiping out the whole of London it would be more humane to employ it than to allow the blood of A SINGLE GERMAN SOLDIER to be shed on the battlefield!”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : "Grandeur and Misery of Victory". Book by Georges Clemenceau, trans. F. M. Atkinson, p. 279 (quoting Matthias Erzberger), 1930.
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“War is a series of disasters which result in a winner.”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
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“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : Attributed in Saturday Review of Literature, 1 Dec. 1945
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“Il est plus facile de faire la guerre que la paix. It is far easier to make war than to make peace.”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : Speech at Verdun, 20 July 1919, in 'Discours de Paix' (1938) p. 122
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“There are only two perfectly useless things in this world. One is an appendix and the other is Poincaré.”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : "Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World". Book by Margaret MacMillan, p. 33, 2003.
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“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.”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : Attributed in Bennett Cerf, Try and Stop Me (1944)
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“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.”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : Quoted in J. Hampden Jackson, Clemenceau and the Third Republic (1946)
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“Americans have no capacity for abstract thought, and make bad coffee.”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : "The Europeans". Book by Luigi Barzini, p. 225, 1984.
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“A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced on his throne.”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : "Antisemitism: Part One of The Origins of Totalitarianism". Book by Hannah Arendt, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. 127, 2012.
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“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.”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
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“Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
“All the great pleasures of life are silent.”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
“War is too important a matter to be left to the military.”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
“Monet's garden must be included with his works, because he combined the magic of an adaptation of nature with the work of a painter of light. An extension of the studio into the openair, with color tones lavishly spread out on all sides to exercise the eye with seductive vibrations, from which a feverishly aroused retina expects unquenchable joy.”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
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“I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace is an interlude during war.”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
“A man who has to be convinced to act before he acts is not a man of action. You must act as you breathe.”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
“It is easier to make war than to make peace.”
-- Georges Clemenceau -
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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 ClemenceauSource : "Clemenceau, The Events of His Life as Told by Himself to His Former Secretary, Jean Martet". Book by Georges Clemenceau, 1930.
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“Oh, to be seventy again!”
-- Georges ClemenceauSource : "Ego 3". Book by James Agate, 1938.
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