Charles De Gaulle Quotes

How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?

The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.

Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

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

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

The cemeteries are full of indispensable men.

France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war

China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.

You'll live. Only the best get killed.

Treaties you see are like girls and roses; they last while they last.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. We are angry at each other much of the time.

I am a man who belongs to nobody and who belongs to everybody.

Soyons fermes, purs et fidèles ; au bout de nos peines, il y a la plus grande gloire du monde, celle des hommes qui n'ont pas cédé. [Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give in.]

Always choose the most difficult way, there you will not meet competitors.

In order to be the master, the politician poses as the servant.

One must speak little. In action one must say nothing. The chief is the one who does not speak.

He will soon be claiming that the Resistance has liberated the world.

The more I get to know men, the more I love dogs.

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

Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone.

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

You don't arrest Voltaire

For get this quite clear, every time we have to decide between Europe and the open sea, it is always the open sea we shall choose. Every time I have to decide between you [Charles de Gaulle] and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.

It is better to have a bad method than to have none.

Vive Le Québec Libre.

Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

I am too poor to bow.

There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.

Where there is a will, there is a way..

Nobody can easily bring together a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese' (Charles de Gaulle, 1961 speech)

The sword is the axis of the world and grandeur cannot be divided.

Difficulty attracts the characterful man, for it is by grasping it that he fulfils himself.

Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.

Men can have friends, statesmen cannot.

History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.

The Jackal was perfectly aware that in 1963 General de Gaulle was not only the President of France; he was also the most closely and skilfully guarded figure in the Western world. To assassinate him, as was later proved, was considerably more difficult than to kill President John F. Kennedy of the United States. Although the English killer did not know it, French security experts who had through American courtesy been given an opportunity to study the precautions taken to guard the life of President Kennedy had returned somewhat disdainful of those precautions as exercised by the American Secret Service. The French experts rejection of the American methods was later justified when in November 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas by a half-crazed and security-slack amateur while Charles de Gaulle lived on, to retire in peace and eventually to die in his own home.

She was beautiful and lithe, with soft skin the color of bread and eyes like green almonds, and she had straight black hair that reached to her shoulders, and an aura of antiquity that could just as well have been Indonesian as Andean. She was dressed with subtle taste: a lynx jacket, a raw silk blouse with very delicate flowers, natural linen trousers, and shoes with a narrow stripe the color of bougainvillea. ‘This is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,’ I thought, when I saw her pass by with the stealthy stride of a lioness, while I waited in the check-in line at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for the plane to New York.

At the same time, France’s president Charles de Gaulle was turning in his country’s dollars for gold because he was concerned the U.S. was printing money to finance its spending.

Charles de Gaulle once said, “The French will only be united under the threat of danger. Nobody can simply bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese.

In human relationships, those who do not love are rarely loved: those who will not be friends end up by having none. [p. 15 apud Thinking Strategically; on the "Intransigence strategy"]

As Charles de Gaulle observed in his meditation on leadership, The Edge of the Sword (1932), the artist ‘does not renounce the use of his intelligence’ – which is, after all, the source of ‘lessons, methods, and knowledge’. Instead, the artist adds to these foundations ‘a certain instinctive faculty which we call inspiration’, which alone can provide the ‘direct contact with nature from which the vital spark must leap’.

Have you ever seen a dictator on a run-off ballot? [Responding to the charges of a dictatorial bent, after being forced into a run-off against the socialist François Mitterrand in the 1965 presidential elections]

Finding a taxi, she felt like a child pressing her nose to the window of a candy store as she watched the changing vista pass by while the twilight descended and the capital became bathed in a translucent misty lavender glow. Entering the city from that airport was truly unique. Charles de Gaulle, built nineteen miles north of the bustling metropolis, ensured that the final point of destination was veiled from the eyes of the traveller as they descended. No doubt, the officials scrupulously planned the airport’s location to prevent the incessant air traffic and roaring engines from visibly or audibly polluting the ambience of their beloved capital, and apparently, they succeeded. If one flew over during the summer months, the visitor would be visibly presented with beautifully managed quilt-like fields of alternating gold and green appearing as though they were tilled and clipped with the mathematical precision of a slide rule. The countryside was dotted with quaint villages and towns that were obviously under meticulous planning control. When the aircraft began to descend, this prevailing sense of exactitude and order made the visitor long for an aerial view of the capital city and its famous wonders, hoping they could see as many landmarks as they could before they touched ground, as was the usual case with other major international airports, but from this point of entry, one was denied a glimpse of the city below. Green fields, villages, more fields, the ground grew closer and closer, a runway appeared, a slight bump or two was felt as the craft landed, and they were surrounded by the steel and glass buildings of the airport. Slightly disappointed with this mysterious game of hide-and-seek, the voyager must continue on and collect their baggage, consoled by the reflection that they will see the metropolis as they make their way into town. For those travelling by road, the concrete motorway with its blue road signs, the underpasses and the typical traffic-logged hubbub of industrial areas were the first landmarks to greet the eye, without a doubt, it was a disheartening first impression. Then, the real introduction began. Quietly, and almost imperceptibly, the modern confusion of steel and asphalt was effaced little by little as the exquisite timelessness of Parisian heritage architecture was gradually unveiled. Popping up like mushrooms were cream sandstone edifices filigreed with curled, swirling carvings, gently sloping mansard roofs, elegant ironwork lanterns and wood doors that charmed the eye, until finally, the traveller was completely submerged in the glory of the Second Empire ala Baron Haussmann’s master plan of city design, the iconic grand mansions, tree-lined boulevards and avenues, the quaint gardens, the majestic churches with their towers and spires, the shops and cafés with their colourful awnings, all crowded and nestled together like jewels encrusted on a gold setting.

So, it wasn’t until I was living in Mexico that I first started enjoying chocolate mousse. See, there was this restaurant called La Lorraine that became a favorite of ours when John and I were living in Mexico City in 1964–65. The restaurant was in a beautiful old colonial period house with a large courtyard, red tile floors, and a big black and white portrait of Charles de Gaulle on the wall. The proprietor was a hefty French woman with grey hair swept up in a bun. She always welcomed us warmly and called us mes enfants, “my children.” Her restaurant was very popular with the folks from the German and French embassies located nearby. She wasn’t too keen on the locals. I think she took to us because I practiced my French on her and you know how the French are about their language! At the end of each evening (yeah, we often closed the joint) madame was usually seated at the table next to the kitchen counting up the evening’s receipts. Across from her at the table sat a large French poodle, wearing a napkin bib and enjoying a bowl of onion soup. Ah, those were the days… Oh, and her mousse au chocolate was to DIE for!

To my own ear, I sound like Charles de Gaulle himself but when I put my new-found phrases into practice, the post office clerk from whom I’ve asked to buy a stamp will look at me like I’ve asked him to administer a rectal thermometer.

But Mandelbrot continued to feel oppressed by France’s purist mathematical establishment. “I saw no compatibility between a university position in France and my still-burning wild ambition,” he writes. So, spurred by the return to power in 1958 of Charles de Gaulle (for whom Mandelbrot seems to have had a special loathing), he accepted the offer of a summer job at IBM in Yorktown Heights, north of New York City. There he found his scientific home. As a large and somewhat bureaucratic corporation, IBM would hardly seem a suitable playground for a self-styled maverick. The late 1950s, though, were the beginning of a golden age of pure research at IBM. “We can easily afford a few great scientists doing their own thing,” the director of research told Mandelbrot on his arrival. Best of all, he could use IBM’s computers to make geometric pictures. Programming back then was a laborious business that involved transporting punch cards from one facility to another in the backs of station wagons.

They assure love from the beginning of life to its conclusion and, in the end, they govern our existence.

I respect only those who stand up to me, but I find such people intolerable.

Les chercheurs qui cherchent, on en trouve. Les chercheurs qui trouvent, on en cherche.

How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?

France cannot be France without greatness.

The graveyards are full of indispensable men

The weather in Paris was unusually warm as Peter Haskell’s plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The plane taxied neatly to the gate, and a few minutes later, briefcase in hand, Peter was striding through the airport. He was almost smiling as he got on the customs line, despite the heat of the day and the number of people crowding ahead of him in line. Peter Haskell loved Paris.

And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon [totalitarianism]? Yes, it was the ordinary man, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. Yes, it was America and its allies. Yes, it was the great leaders: FDR, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Thatcher, Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

Chapter One The weather in Paris was unusually warm as Peter Haskell’s plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The plane taxied neatly to the gate, and a few minutes later, briefcase in hand, Peter was striding through the airport. He was almost smiling as he got on the customs line, despite the heat of the day and the number of people crowding ahead of him in line. Peter Haskell loved Paris. He generally traveled to Europe

In 1945, Yvonne established an Anne de Gaulle Foundation for Down’s syndrome children in a château bought for the purpose outside Paris, and, after his daughter’s death in 1948, de Gaulle kept her framed photograph with him.

He accused republicans in his own party of conducting a “proxy war” against Howard. He threw into the mix Churchill, Pétain, Charles de Gaulle, the failings of the Weimar republic and the rise of Hitler. In the Sydney Morning Herald at that time I set him some homework:   Clearly explain how an Australian head of state with powers as proposed in the referendum could bring to office in Canberra a local equivalent of the most vicious dictator of the century?   He never justified the Hitler slur to anyone.

Roosevelt fought hard for the United States to host the opening session [of the United Nations]; it seemed a magnanimous gesture to most of the delegates. But the real reason was to better enable the United States to eavesdrop on its guests. Coded messages between the foreign delegations and their distant capitals passed through U.S. telegraph lines in San Francisco. With wartime censorship laws still in effect, Western Union and the other commercial telegraph companies were required to pass on both coded and uncoded telegrams to U.S. Army codebreakers. Once the signals were captured, a specially designed time-delay device activated to allow recorders to be switched on. Devices were also developed to divert a single signal to several receivers. The intercepts were then forwarded to Arlington Hall, headquarters of the Army codebreakers, over forty-six special secure teletype lines. By the summer of 1945 the average number of daily messages had grown to 289,802, from only 46,865 in February 1943. The same soldiers who only a few weeks earlier had been deciphering German battle plans were now unraveling the codes and ciphers wound tightly around Argentine negotiating points. During the San Francisco Conference, for example, American codebreakers were reading messages sent to and from the French delegation, which was using the Hagelin M-209, a complex six-wheel cipher machine broken by the Army Security Agency during the war. The decrypts revealed how desperate France had become to maintain its image as a major world power after the war. On April 29, for example, Fouques Duparc, the secretary general of the French delegation, complained in an encrypted note to General Charles de Gaulle in Paris that France was not chosen to be one of the "inviting powers" to the conference. "Our inclusion among the sponsoring powers," he wrote, "would have signified, in the eyes of all, our return to our traditional place in the world." In charge of the San Francisco eavesdropping and codebreaking operation was Lieutenant Colonel Frank B. Rowlett, the protégé of William F. Friedman. Rowlett was relieved when the conference finally ended, and he considered it a great success. "Pressure of work due to the San Francisco Conference has at last abated," he wrote, "and the 24-hour day has been shortened. The feeling in the Branch is that the success of the Conference may owe a great deal to its contribution." The San Francisco Conference served as an important demonstration of the usefulness of peacetime signals intelligence. Impressive was not just the volume of messages intercepted but also the wide range of countries whose secrets could be read. Messages from Colombia provided details on quiet disagreements between Russia and its satellite nations as well as on "Russia's prejudice toward the Latin American countries." Spanish decrypts indicated that their diplomats in San Francisco were warned to oppose a number of Russian moves: "Red maneuver . . . must be stopped at once," said one. A Czechoslovakian message indicated that nation's opposition to the admission of Argentina to the UN. From the very moment of its birth, the United Nations was a microcosm of East-West spying. Just as with the founding conference, the United States pushed hard to locate the organization on American soil, largely to accommodate the eavesdroppers and codebreakers of NSA and its predecessors.

French police and the SS worked together on round-ups in Marseille, classified as ‘moral cleansing’. In all, some 75,000 Jews would be deported from France in terrible conditions to concentration camps in eastern Europe. Only 3 per cent returned alive.

Cecil von Renthe-Fink, a tall Prussian aristocrat who advocated the creation of a European confederacy under German leadership with a single currency and a central bank in Berlin, was sent to mind the Marshal.183

the US continued to recognise Vichy and the Free French were reduced to operating in the US out of the office of the representative of the Patou perfume firm.143

According to de Gaulle’s account, Blum assured him of his interest in the soldier’s ideas. ‘But you fought against them,’ his visitor observed. ‘One changes one’s point of view when one becomes head of the government,’ came the reply.

Though the issue of collaboration, whether active or passive, remains a highly emotive matter in France, the fact was that, in the summer of 1940, most people in the unoccupied zone accepted the armistice.

Charles de Gaulle said? ‘The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Panicked, Charles de Gaulle fled the country, heading for refuge at French military bases in Baden-Baden, Germany. Half

In the course of the meeting the two leaders discussed what terms of surrender they would eventually insist upon; the word “unconditional” was discussed but not included in the official joint statement to be read at the final press conference. Then, on January 24, to Churchill’s surprise, Roosevelt inserted the word ad lib: “Peace can come to the world,” the President read out to the assembled journalists and newsreel cameras, “only by the total elimination of German and Japanese war power. . . . The elimination of German, Japanese and Italian war power means the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy, and Japan.”1976 Roosevelt later told Harry Hopkins that the surprising and fateful insertion was a consequence of the confusion attending his effort to convince French General Henri Girard to sit down with Free French leader Charles de Gaulle: We had so much trouble getting those two French generals together that I thought to myself that this was as difficult as arranging the meeting of Grant and Lee—and then suddenly the Press Conference was on, and Winston and I had had no time to prepare for it, and the thought popped into my mind that they had called Grant “Old Unconditional Surrender,” and the next thing I knew I had said it.1977

Hitler's architect and later Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer. Speer had been imprisoned for his role in the use of slave labor during the war, but though he was found guilty for a number of crimes,  and served nineteen years in prison, upon his release which was supported by such people as French president Charles DeGaulle and other high-ranking politicians, he was considered in many ways a “good German”. He had admitted his guilt at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials after the war, and acknowledged that the crimes committed under Hitler would haunt Germany forever. He wrote his memoirs in prison and spoke not only about his complicity in the use of slave labor but also his attempts to thwart some of Hitler's more barbaric plans at the end of the war. Much of the proceeds from his bestselling memoirs went to Jewish organizations, though this was not discovered until after Speer had died.

American accent. Broad shoulders, at least fifty years old. He was wearing generic sunglasses and a cap that read NASHVILLE PREDATORS. His lips were thin, sharp like a palm leaf. Lucie stood up; the man took up position behind her. The cop looked around for pedestrians, witnesses, but no luck. Alone and unarmed, she was helpless. They walked about a hundred yards without encountering a soul. A Datsun 240Z was waiting under the maples. “You drive.” He pushed her roughly into the car. Lucie’s throat was knotted and she was finding it hard to stay calm. The faces of her twins swam before her eyes. Not like this, she kept thinking. Not like this… The man took a seat next to her. Like a pro, he quickly patted her pockets, thighs, and hips. He took out her wallet, removed her police ID—which he looked at carefully—then turned off her cell phone. Lucie spoke in a slightly shaky voice: “No need—it isn’t working.” “Drive.” “What is it you want? I—” “Drive, I said.” She started the car. They headed out of Montreal due north, via the Charles de Gaulle Bridge. And left the lights of the city far behind.

There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt

Why do you think that at 67 I would start a career as a dictator?

Puisque tout recommence toujours, ce que j'ai fait sera, tôt ou tard, source d'ardeurs nouvelles, après que j'aurai disparu. 

(Charles de Gaulle aseguró que un país con semejante abundancia de quesos resulta necesariamente “difícil de gobernar”)

Relatively few Frenchmen, with the notable exceptions of General Charles de Gaulle and his followers, made any attempt to flee the country and continue resisting from outside.

Only peril364 can bring the French together. One can’t impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 different kinds of cheese. —CHARLES DE GAULLE

The graveyards are full of heroes.

From the moment that humans find themselves subjected, by their work, their pleasures, their interests, their thoughts, perpetually joined together, in their thoughts, from the moment that their houses, their clothes, their food become progressively identical, from the moment that they read the same things at the same time in the same newspapers, see everywhere in the world the same films … from the moment that the same means of transport lead men and women to the same offices and workshops, the same restaurants and canteens, the same sports fields and the same theaters… the result is a sort of general mechanization of existence in which the individual is sure to be crushed.

From the moment that humans find themselves subjected, by their work, their pleasures, their interests, their thoughts, perpetually joined together, in their thoughts, from the moment that their houses, their clothes, their food become progressively identical, from the moment that they read the same things at the same time in the same newspapers, see everywhere in the world the same films… from the moment that the same means of transport lead men and women to the same offices and workshops, the same restaurants and canteens, the same sports fields and the same theaters… the result is a sort of general mechanization of existence in which the individual is sure to be crushed.

One does not imprison Voltaire.

Without the Peloponnesian War, Demosthenes would have remained an obscure politician; without the English invasion, Joan of Arc would have died peaceably at Domremy; without the Revolution, Carnot and Napoleon would have finished their existence in lowly rank; without the present war General Petain would have finished his career at the head of a brigade.

The welter of major policy decisions taken by American leaders between May and August 1945 were among the most complex in the nation’s history. Purely military strategy was amalgamated into high considerations of foreign policy; all minds, including those of senior generals and admirals, were turning toward the postwar order. The president’s men were absorbed in the day-in, day-out skirmishes with Stalin over the Yalta accords, the occupation and reconstruction of Germany, the political claims of Charles de Gaulle in France, and the charter of the United Nations. They were just beginning to think about the future of Asia, the status of former Japanese territories, the fate of British colonies, the red insurgency in China, the future of Japan under Allied occupation, and the still-uncertain matter of whether Japan’s overseas armies would lay down arms if ordered to do so by Tokyo, or if they would have to be beaten in the field even after the home islands were subjugated.

I respect only those who resist me, but cannot tolerate them

How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?” Charles de Gaulle Charles de Gaulle a highly recognized French General and Statesman was born in Lille, France on November 22, 1890. During the First World War he was wounded several times, and later taken prisoner by the Germans near Verdun. During the Second World War, during the German invasion of May 1940, he led an armored division which successfully counterattacked the German troops. Towards the end of the war he headed the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946. In 1958, de Gaulle was elected as the 18th President of France, an office he held until his resignation in 1969. As a war hero of the Allied forces and France, his memory continues to inspire the French people. Charles de Gaulle died of a ruptured artery on November 9, 1970 leaving his wife Yvonne Vendroux and two of their three children. He is also credited with saying… “You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.

I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.’ Charles de Gaulle.

History is the encontrar of will and exceptional periods.

Ik bracht hem naar de luchthaven Charles de Gaulle en toen ik hem bij de balie van Japan Air Lines de hand drukte, voelde ik dat hij een klein metalen voorwerp tussen mijn vingers liet glijden. Het was een huzaar van de keizerlijke garde. 'Ik heb hem dubbel,' legde hij uit, 'hij zal je geluk brengen, beste jongen.

And there, in the middle of the Charles de Gaulle Airport, I sink into a flawless nay-nay and offer a silent thank you up to my ancestors, or karma, or whatever.

The two real fathers of Israeli hi-tech are the Arab boycott and Charles de Gaulle, because they forced on us the need to go and develop an industry. —YOSSI VARDI

Although independent of grammar, sound changes might well have important consequences for the grammatical system. A good example is the extreme erosion of final consonants in French, which has left singular and plural sounding identical in many cases. Labov (1994: 569) quotes a speech by Charles De Gaulle in Madagascar in which he states: ‘Je m’adresse aux peuples français – au pluriel’ (‘I address the French peoples – in the plural’), clearly feeling the need to add ‘au pluriel’ because singular au peuple and plural aux peuples [opæpl] are homophonous.

Certains des nôtres savent déjà - mais ne le savaient-ils pas depuis toujours - que le signe fondamental, que le signum magnum de ce changement abyssal de l'histoire de ce monde annoncé par Joseph de Maistre n'est autre que celui de la mise en chantier, à la fois historique et suprahistorique, de cet Imperium Ultimum, condition préliminaire de l'avènement du Regnum Sanctum, que des forces considérables s'utilisent à l'heure actuelle à en préparer les voies, révolutionnaires et impériales, dans le visible et dans l'invisible, dans l'espace intérieur secret de l'histoire où se passent les grandes décisions du destin. Imperium Ultimum que l'on pourra désormais identifier dans le projet révolutionnaire impérial grand-continental et planétaire d'un certain gaullisme transcendantal, occulte, se maintenant très à dessein encore dans l'ombre, le projet de ce que nous autres nous appelons du nom de l'Empire Eurasitaique de la Fin. Un projet dont le "concept absolu" apparaît comme avoir été, et qui restera, jusqu'à la fin, la figure déjà suprahistorique de Charles de Gaulle, à la fois dans sa trajectoire politico-historique propre et dans les dimensions encore inconnues, nocturnes, de sa personnalité cachée et de son "grand dessein" secret, "grand dessein" impérial planétaire en appelant à sa vision mystique du Regnum Sanctum, en qui celui-là trouvera son accomplissement final, son affirmation suprême.

Charles de Gaulle once said that John Kennedy was the mask of America but Lyndon Johnson was its real face.

On dit que nous avons droit à l’indépendance mais certainement oui. D’ailleurs l’indépendance quiconque la voudra pourra la prendre aussitôt. La métropole ne s’y opposera pas.

Democracies have a natural tendency to turn against their saviours. It happened to Winston Churchill. It happened to Charles de Gaulle and it happened to Margaret Thatcher. It was not the faults of those great leaders that caused their downfall, but their virtues

Much later, (S.A.Ayer) credited (Subhas Chandra) Bose with combining in his person "the qualities of Akbar, Shivaji and Vivekananda," which is a little like saying that Charles de Gaulle was Joan of Arc, Louis XIV and Victor Hugo all rolled into one.

recalled Sir Edward Spears, the wartime liaison between Churchill and de Gaulle. “We had 15,000 French sailors at Liverpool. I went to speak to them. I tried to persuade them to continue the fighting. Impossible …

Only one deputy, one admiral, and one leading academic remain with the Free French in London, and de Gaulle notices that all of his earliest supporters are either Jews or Socialists. A man of mythic pride, de Gaulle is infuriated by his total dependence on the British.

Thatcher wanted to use Westminster Hall to stage a reception for a sitting U. S. president, Ronald Reagan. Since it would be a state event, she had to obtain the consent of the Labour Party leader, who then happened to be Michael Foot. He refused. Westminster Hall had received such figures as Charles DeGaulle. Thatcher said to Michael, “That’s very small-minded of you. Why are you opposing it?” Michael said, “Don’t you understand? He’s going to stand for election again.” It would be like electioneering for Reagan, Michael argued. “Our people don’t want him re-elected. It’s nothing like a nonparty event.” So Reagan had to deliver his speech in a room off of the House of Lords.