Georges Clemenceau Quotes

A mans life is interesting primarily when he has failed. I well know. For its a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation.

War is too important to be left to the generals

Fourteen Points? The Good Lord only gave us Ten, and do we abide by those?

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.

L'homme qui n'a pas été anarchiste à seize ans est un imbécile. Mais c'en est un autre, s'il l'est encore à quarante.

All that I know I learned after I was thirty.

I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war.

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

America is the only civilization in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization

One of the pieces of advice that Churchill had given Georges Clemenceau during the Great War had been ‘to forget old quarrels … In England we … make many muddles, but we always keep more or less together.

In the past, when Michel had been asked about how the firm would manage without the prolific Felix, he would quote Georges Clemenceau, the French World War I leader: “The cemeteries are full of indispensable men.

The law is too important to be left to the lawyers, to paraphrase Georges Clemenceau about war and generals. We laymen know too little about our Constitution and think too superficially about its influence on the qualities of American life. Civic duty requires more.

Les cimetières sont pleins de gens irremplaçables, qui ont tous été remplacés.

Le Néant est bien supérieur au Paradis – le Paradis est une amélioration, le Néant, une perfection…

The Treaty of Guarantee was signed accordingly by Wilson and Lloyd George and Clemenceau. The United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty. They repudiated President Wilson’s signature. And we, who had deferred so much to his opinions and wishes in all this business of peace-making, were told without much ceremony that we ought to be better informed about the American Constitution.

Biraz da İstanbul havasına dönelim: Beyoğlu’nda İngiliz karargâhına uğrıyalım, Yüzbaşı Armstrong’la bir defa daha görüşelim. Armstrong der ki: “Londra’da iken Türkiye’deki yanılmalarımızın sebebini anlamak istedim. Fakat boşuna uğraştım. Londra’da sanılıyordu ki Türkiye’ye ait kararlar İstanbul’da verilmektedir, İstanbul’da ise bunun aksi sanılmakta idi. Asıl mesele harp ruhunun sönmüş olmasında idi. Hiçbir sınıfta kuvvet kullanmak hevesi yoktu. ‘Kızıl bayrak’ tahrikleriyle çalkalanan İngiliz adalarının yanı başında İrlanda ateş içinde idi. Hükûmet dış politika ile uğraşmaya vakit bulamıyordu. Yakınşark’a önem verilmiyordu. Yeni bir Türkiye’nin doğduğu, müttefikler karşısında dayanabilecek bir kuvvet meydana geldiği anlaşılmıyordu. Şark işlerini bilmeyen Lloyd George’u güden duygu ve düşünce, Gladston’kârî Türk düşmanlığı idi. Yunanistan büyümeli ve İngiltere ile yeni büyük Yunanistan’ın menfaatleri birleştirilmeliydi. Lloyd George’un bilgisi, eski Yunanistan’ın şairleri ve filozofları olmuş olmasından ibaretti. Bir defa Clemenceau demişti ki: ‘Lloyd George’un okumak bildiğini biliyorum, fakat okuduğundan şüphe ediyorum.’ Venizelos’un sihrine kapılan Lloyd George’a göre Yunanistan, Avrupa ve Anadolu’da eski şan ve şerefine kavuşacak, Boğazlar’ı Avrupa’ya açık tutacak, Akdeniz’de İngiltere ile beraber yürüyecekti. Yunanistan oyun bozanlığa kalkarsa, İngiltere donanması onu uslandırmaya yeterdi. Lloyd George’un aldandığı nokta, Yunanlıların kendilerine verilen görevi başarabilecek güçte olmadığı idi.

Oh, no, he didn’t write that. That’s what he said to me. It was on the campaign train, not in the White House. We were talking about mistakes that other people had made—that [Woodrow] Wilson had made, that [Georges] Clemenceau had made. Yes, Spain. The neutrality with Spain was a big mistake. “That comes back to me all the time,” he said. HJ: It always struck me that the fact that some of our more progressive presidents—the Roosevelts and the Kennedys—came from wealthier backgrounds meant that they were less intimidated by other rich people, and therefore, less susceptible to special interests. The poor kids are the more dangerous ones—Reagan is so impressed with rich people—it is such an important part of his life.

Returning to Paris the day after the empire’s fall, Hugo was greeted by a huge crowd at the Gare du Nord. Never one to shy from an audience, he pushed his way through the mob and into a café, where he spoke from a balcony: “Citizens,” he told them, “I have come to do my duty.” He had come, he added, “to defend Paris, to protect Paris”—a sacred trust, given Paris’s position as the “center of humanity.”6 After that, he climbed aboard an open carriage, from where he spoke again to the fervent crowd before making his way to the house of a friend, near Place Pigalle. There the young Montmartre mayor, Georges Clemenceau, warmly welcomed him.

I tried to cut through all our hurried centuries, lost in a forest within. Men broke by war emerged in frightful shape— more than human but also less, they were quite aware, the sovereign dead, that time is like a window opening up the sad patterns of never. As one they advanced— Lloyd George Georges Clemenceau Adolph Hitler —through history. But the past does not follow so straightforward a path said I (predictably in Italian), and, burning under their masters, they proclaimed the world a pendulum. It is possible, but this gives rise to the often-heard complaint that repetition is unavoidable. Still time issues into today, little fathers. The years, I believe, can be shaped with one’s hands. The world —its obscure moving fields, Persian tragedies, and countries in peace— I had to inform that council of the lost, remains an instrument, a valve instrument, which, when waning, is perfectly clear in the pit —and, being given to such classical concepts as freedom and necessity, laboriously continued in the traditional way— I believe I believe.

As Georges Clemenceau, reporting on Reconstruction for a French newspaper, observed after the war, “Any Democrat who did not manage to hint that the negro is a degenerate gorilla would be considered lacking in enthusiasm.”57

What Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau wanted in Russia was the destruction of Communism and the revival of the capitalist state. They could not face being told by a confident young junior American diplomat that the Lenin regime, despite its difficulties, had too strong a hold on Russia to be replaced and ought to be dealt with while its weaknesses could still be exploited for concessions.