Frasi di Georges Clemenceau
Georges Clemenceau
Data di nascita: 28. Settembre 1841
Data di morte: 24. Novembre 1929
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau è stato un politico francese, primo ministro dal 1906 al 1909 e dal 1917 al 1920, è stato uno degli artefici del trattato di Versailles.
Frasi Georges Clemenceau
„A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he’s not a man of action.“
— Georges Clemenceau
Context: 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.
Conversation with Jean Martet (18 December 1927), Ch. 11, p. 167.
„To me the scene possessed only the horror of a slaughter-house.“
— Georges Clemenceau
Context: In the distance huge trees were still blazing, around us was a waste of ashes and of half-consumed boughs, and the falling rain seemed only to quicken the dying conflagration. In some of the great green boles were fearful gaping wounds through which the sap was oozing, while some tall trees still stretched to heaven their triumphant crown of foliage above a trunk all charred that would never sprout again. The Brazilians contemplate spectacles such as this with a wholly indifferent eye, and, indeed, even with satisfaction, for they see in the ruin only a promise of future harvests. To me the scene possessed only the horror of a slaughter-house.
[http://www.archive.org/details/southamericatoda011092mbp South America To-Day : A Study of Conditions, Social, Political, and Commercial in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil (1911)] Ch. 14, Brazilian Coffee, p. 395
„In the distance huge trees were still blazing, around us was a waste of ashes and of half-consumed boughs, and the falling rain seemed only to quicken the dying conflagration.“
— Georges Clemenceau
Context: In the distance huge trees were still blazing, around us was a waste of ashes and of half-consumed boughs, and the falling rain seemed only to quicken the dying conflagration. In some of the great green boles were fearful gaping wounds through which the sap was oozing, while some tall trees still stretched to heaven their triumphant crown of foliage above a trunk all charred that would never sprout again. The Brazilians contemplate spectacles such as this with a wholly indifferent eye, and, indeed, even with satisfaction, for they see in the ruin only a promise of future harvests. To me the scene possessed only the horror of a slaughter-house.
[http://www.archive.org/details/southamericatoda011092mbp South America To-Day : A Study of Conditions, Social, Political, and Commercial in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil (1911)] Ch. 14, Brazilian Coffee, p. 395
„America is far away and protected by the ocean, England could not be reached by Napoleon himself. You are sheltered, both of you; we are not.“
— Georges Clemenceau
Context: After expending the greatest effort, and suffering the greatest sacrifices in blood in all history, we must not compromise the results of our victory... if the League of Nations cannot buttress its orders with military sanctions we must find this sanction elsewhere... I beg you to understand my state of mind, just as I am trying to understand yours. America is far away and protected by the ocean, England could not be reached by Napoleon himself. You are sheltered, both of you; we are not.
Speech at the Paris Peace Conference (27 March 1919), quoted in Anthony Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France's Bid for Power in Europe 1914-1940 (London: Arnold, 1995), p. 40.
„There are only two perfectly useless things in this world. One is an appendix and the other is Poincaré.“
— Georges Clemenceau
Context: There are only two perfectly useless things in this world. One is an appendix and the other is Poincaré.
Referring to his rival Raymond Poincaré, as quoted in Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World (2003) by Margaret MacMillan, p. 33
„I think war is inevitable. We must do nothing to provoke it, but we must be ready for it; helped by Russia and England, doubtless by Spain also and perhaps by Italy as well, we may be able to win. In any case it will be a life and death affair: if we are beaten we will be crushed.“
— Georges Clemenceau
Letter to Georges Louis (28 July 1908), quoted in David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 221.
„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
Conversation with Jean Martet (1 June 1928), Ch. 30
