Georges Clemenceau Quotes

Peace or war, we are in the midst of a relentless struggle for power. Woe to the weak! Turn your back on the purveyors of soothing syrup!

Germany...was unfortunate enough to allow herself (in spite of her skill at dissimulation) to be betrayed into an excess of candour by her characteristic tendency to go to extremes. Deutschland über alles. Germany above everything! That, and nothing less, is what she asks, and when once her demand is satisfied she will let you enjoy a peace under the yoke. Not only does she make no secret of her aim, but the intolerable arrogance of the German aristocracy, the servile good nature of the intellectual and the scholar, the gross vanity of the most competent leaders in industry, and the widespread influence of a violent popular poetry conspire to shatter throughout the world all the time-honoured traditions of individual, as well as international, dignity.

What after all is this war, prepared, undertaken, and waged by the German people, who flung aside every scruple of conscience to let it loose, hoping for a peace of enslavement under the yoke of a militarism destructive of all human dignity? It is simply the continuance, the recrudescence, of those never-ending acts of violence by which the first savage tribes carried out their depredations with all the resources of barbarism. The means improve with the ages. The ends remain the same.

[W]hen at Versailles Brockdorff-Rantzau addressed me in the language of the bearer of a challenge, I was forced to realize that the German revolution was mere window-dressing, and that, with the aggressor of 1914 not a whit cured of his insane folly, we should continue without respite to be subjected, in a new setting, to the same attack from the same enemy.

For the catastrophe of 1914 the Germans are responsible. Only a professional liar would deny this.

I belonged to the generation that saw the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and never could I be consoled for that loss. And I here recall, with pardonable pride, that in 1908 I stood up against Germany in the Casablanca crisis, and that the Government of William II, after demanding apologies from us, was forced by my calm resistance to be satisfied with mere arbitration, as in any other dispute.

There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function.

Americans have no capacity for abstract thought, and make bad coffee.

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.

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.