French Canadians Quotes

I am branded in Quebec as a traitor to the French, and in Ontario as a traitor to the English. In Quebec I am branded as a Jingo, and in Ontario as a separatist. In Quebec I am attacked is an imperialists, and in Ontario as an anti-imperialist. I am neither. I am a Canadian.

Estranged from the powerful protection of the United Kingdom, you must be re-annexed to the dominion of France from which the provinces of Canada were wrested by the arms of Great Britain, at a vast expense of blood and treasure, for no other motive than to relieve her ungrateful children from the oppression of a cruel neighbor.

He shall hang though every dog in Quebec bark in his favor.

We [French Canadians] may not assimilate, we may not blend, but for all that we are still the component parts of the same country.

So far as one can generalize, the most gracious, cultivated, and innovative people in this country are French Canadians. Certainly they have given us the most exciting politicians of our time: Trudeau, Levesque. Without them, Canada would be an exceedingly boring and greatly diminished place

No man in his senses can suppose that this country can for a century to come be governed by totally unfrenchified government ...

The day a race ceases to express its thought and its sentiments in that language which has grown with it and which took form with its ethnic temperament, it is lost as a race. The preservation of its language is absolutely necessary to the preservation of the race, of its genius, its character and it's temperament.

There will be no annexation of ourselves or our territory to an independent Quebec without our consent.

Only thing worse than a Frenchman is a Frenchman who lives in Canada

Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with the disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples. French-Canadians consumed by self-pity; the descendants of Scots who fled the Duke of Cumberland; Irish, the famine; and Jews, the Black Hundreds. Then there are the peasants from Ukraine, Poland, Italy and Greece, convenient to grow wheat and dig out the ore and swing the hammers and run the restaurants, but otherwise to be kept in their place. Most of us are huddled tight to the border, looking into the candy store window, scared of the Americans on one side and of the bush on the other

My defense of the province [Quebec] would have succeeded had not this wretched people[the French Canadians] been blind to honor, duty, and their own interest.

French-Canadians have no need to be afraid of the English ... instead, let us admire their energy and perseverance; let us imitate them. To be excellent French-Canadians we need to have, along with the qualities of our race, the best qualities of the English-Canadians.

The meanest worm that crawls upon the earth, when trampled upon, will endeavor to recoil and strike back, and I say that the guilt of the rebellion does not rest with these men [the Metis rebels] so much as those who provoked them.

I am first Prime Minister of this country of neither all together English nor French origin .... I am determined to bring about the Canadian citizenship that knew no hyphenated consideration.

No common education has served to remove and soften the differences of origin and language.

In Quebec, people are moved too often by passion and too little by intelligence.

We are Quebecois.

It can no more negotiate sovereignty-association then it can negotiate sour sugar, dry water, boiling ice, or stationary motion.

Not a single one, not a single one among us [French Canadians], in 200 years, has won a battle... and this is what it is to be colonized! When we have but martyrs! How can we have aspirations!? How can we have the will to fight!?

Quebec is the Western world's last colonial nation.

Quebec has no opinions, only emotions.

A sense of grievance can accumulate with the success of conflict no matter how it has been resolved.

Then came the conquest. We were conquered people, our hearts set on surviving in some small way on a continent that had become Anglo-Saxon.

You know, I would like to ask to the other parts of Canada to respect the minority of the French Canadians.

Why, so soon as French Canadians, who are in a minority in this House and in the country, were to organise as a political party, they would compel the majority to organise as a political party, and the result must be disastrous to themselves.