French Quotes

France can never accept that it is no longer a dominating power in the world of culture. This is true both of the French right and the French left. They keep thinking that Americans are primitive cowboys or farmers who do not understand anything.

I like to talk about my obsession with french fries because I don't want people to think that 'Let's Move' is about complete, utter deprivation. It's about moderation and real-life changes and ideas that really work for families.

Generally, the French highly promote culture and the arts, and photography is in their blood.

Just because you win the French Open it doesn't mean you can do well at Wimbledon.

When I used to have a show on French TV, people would ask me how my jacket stayed spotless while cooking. Your whole area has to be clean - and you have to keep it that way.

The three actors I admire the most are all dead. Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and the French actor, Jean Gabin. They're all very natural, sort of masculine without being overly macho.

I'm 50% Asian actually, so yes I was born in Paris but I feel more international than French so I can't talk about French women.

Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century, and it was called Wiff-waff! And there, I think, you have the difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner; we looked at it an saw an opportunity to play Wiff-waff.

When Picasso painted in Paris, was he a Spanish or a French painter? It does not matter, he was Picasso, whatever the influences surrounding him. He simply chose Paris because it was the ideal place for him to sell his creation.

If I were not French I would choose to be - Scotch.

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

I moved from New Zealand to Melbourne when I was 17. I'd planned to go to university to study French, but I was offered a contract to write and record an album that was too good to pass up. Looking back now I think that was pretty young but, at the time, I was ready to have an adventure.

I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas.

Most of the Ten Commandments are negative. The purpose of law is not to mandate good behavior. That concept comes from the French Revolution.

The world distribution of French movies is a laughing matter. That is a fact.

Being French, to me, is first and foremost being a revolutionary.

Whether it's destiny or fate or whatever, I don't think I could do a French Laundry anywhere else.

After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.

The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own.

France turned a deaf ear to the demands, but Ho had succeeded in attracting great publicity in progressive French circles to the situation in Indochina.

When I was 20, I went to Paris and tried to meet French women. It didn't work.

I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war - certainly, the French president, Jacques Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq's possession of WMD.

English, once accepted as an international language, is no more secure than French has proved to be as the one and only accepted language of diplomacy or as Latin has proved to be as the international language of science.

These three movements were born spontaneously and independently of the initiative of a few French patriots who had a place in the old political groups and parties.

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.

If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt.

The French people need to have all the facts so they can choose. And I won't be running away from it or hiding from it.

When I finally decided to do the show, I only had two weeks to learn the choreography and the songs in French.

The liberation movement which I led in Algeria, the organization that I created to fight the French army, was at first a small movement of nothing at all. We were but some tens of people throughout Algeria, a territory that is five times the size of France.

People know that I have a great love for cinema. Not just for commercial cinema, but for the 'cinema d'auteur.' But to me, two of the great 'auteurs' are actually actors and they both happen to be French. One is Alain Delon and the other is Jean-Paul Belmondo.