France Quotes
He was exactly right. Two decades later Germany had started WWII.
Napoleon recognized that technology and science were major factors in innovation and economic development and that mathematics was necessary for that and for economics, and therefore placed a great deal of emphasis on mathematics education. He was a fairly competent mathematically himself having been an artillery officer early in his career.
Prince de Benévant
Martel’s strategy was to allow the Saracen invaders to take a few towns and accumulate plenty of booty. This would slow them down as an army, and many of the individual soldiers was carrying looted goods of one kind or another.
Leaders of nations for years only trusted as truly patriotic those man—usually nobles of the aristocracy—who owned land. If an invader came and seized their land, they would lose their wealth. However money is fungible, and a banker can easily move his money abroad and join another nation or side in a war. If the country is ruined by war, the manufacturer cannot obtain labor or raw materials, The financier depends on none of these and so hs not the vested interest in the welfare of the nation.
Chvalkovsky had just returned from Berlin where he had met with Hitler and German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. He related the meeting to the French Ambassador who reported it to the French Foreign Minister by letter.
Ataturk was a young major at the time commanding troops of a weak and corrupt Ottoman regime. However a combined English and French (the strongest military powers in Europe) invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula threatened to capture the Turkish capital, Constantinople. Ataturk alone rallied the Turkish defenders and fought the invaders to a standoff in long drawn out battle with huge casualties on both sides. Ataturk became a national hero. Although Ataturk thereafter was very reluctant to use military force or endanger troops, the thing he always thought worth the supreme sacrifice (including his own) was the independence and sovereignty of the nation. See {584502} for his continuing belief in this type of sacrifice.
The terror to which he referred was to the French Revolution’s executing former aristocrats and then including anyone suspected of monarchist sympathies. This quotation shows how fanatics can rationalize evil as justice.
Voltaire made this quotation famous but he did not originate it. Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, another ho wrote it over 100 years earlier (See {596505} ). Sometimes the origin is attributed to Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, 1611-1675, a French General.
Bush was addressing all countries in the wake of the September 11 attack on New York and Washington.
What makes this quotation particularly funny is that “entrepreneur” is not originally an English word but was borrowed from the French. However, probably what the president was trying to express is that the French act as if they had not word or concept as they have many economic policies that discourage entrepreneurship. The President while a bright man has never been particularly gifted as an intellectual or an orator, becomes the butt of humor with this quotation. There are Bush supporters who challenge the fact that Bush actually made such a gaff, and there has been no other verification other than Baroness Williams.
