Quotes from Jean Guéhenno

It is bad to love life if one loves it like a coward.

Getting old always means a hardening of the main trait of one's character.

The danger was within itself: it was the crisis of confidence it was going through, the fear of being itself. When you considered them individually, French boys were as active and intelligent as ever. But they lacked the sort of shared hope and dreams which are the sign of health in a people. The fact that the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Revolution were only funeral commemorations revealed that weakness, that lifelessness. It was so clear

Un livre est un outil de liberté.

I will take refuge in my real country. My country, my France, is a France that cannot be invaded.

It seems to me that today every piece of writing, every word one Frenchman can say to all the other French must be first and foremost a sign of fraternity, and then must mean: 'Be proud, whoever you are, my comrade, my brother. All this happened only because we were not proud enough. Be proud. You are not defeated and you never will be.

1. Once again, my country, that country which is only an idea has not been invaded and never will be. 2. Pétain is not France. Pétain and Laval do not speak for us. Their word does not commit us to anything and cannot dishonor us. 3. The only right way to gauge this event must be in terms of the world. In the world, France has not been defeated.

Nothing shocks me more in the men of religion and their flocks than their pretensions to be the only religious people.