Laval Quotes & Sayings

We have given most of Europe to Hitler. Let us try to hold on to what we have got left. — Pierre Laval

For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom than in securing it for yourself and others. This I knew long ago. What I did not understand was why time and again, after fighting your way out of a swamp, you sank into a worse one. Then groping and cautiously looking about me, I gradually found out what has enslaved you: YOUR SLAVE DRIVER IS YOU YOURSELF. No one is to blame for your slavery but you yourself. No one else, I say! — Wilhelm Reich

France cannot be destroyed. She is an old country who, despite her misfortunes, has, and always will have, thanks to her past, a tremendous prestige in the world, whatever the fate inflicted upon her. — Pierre Laval

Workers of France, it is for the freedom of the prisoners that you will go to work in Germany! It is for our country that you will go in large numbers! — Pierre Laval

It is neither the statesman nor the friend who is asking your help and assistance, but simply the man. — Pierre Laval

I want to tell you that I think this war is a great mistake. — Pierre Laval

In the event of a victory over Germany by Soviet Russia and England, Bolshevism in Europe would inevitably follow. Under these circumstances I would prefer to see Germany win the war. — Pierre Laval

But the same intelligence compels Germany to practise the same policy. — Pierre Laval

I am a peasant from the Auvergne. I want to keep my farm, and I want to keep France. Nothing else matters now. — Pierre Laval

The two of us had come a long way together from our humble beginnings and the basement apartment that had been our first home as newlyweds in 1957, when I was still a law student at Laval University in Quebec City. — Jean Chretien

I feel that an understanding could be reached with Germany which would result in a lasting peace with Europe and believe that a German victory is preferable to a British and Soviet victory. — Pierre Laval

It is in order that France may find her place in the new Europe that you will respond to my appeal. — Pierre Laval

I defy anyone - and I have said this to the Germans - to build a solid, articulated, and viable Europe without France's consent. — Pierre Laval

Sure enough a few delinquent chiefs have been uncovered. The media then focused on them, as if they were representative of all chiefs. But the reality is that very few chiefs were found to be acting badly. Most were found to be underpaid. Did anyone bother to compare the percentage of overpaid chiefs with the percentage of overpaid CEOs in the private sector? The percentage of corrupt or incompetent chiefs with the percentage of corrupt or incompetent mayors? Toronto, Montreal, Laval and London come to mind, representing a large percentage of Canada's population. On August — John Ralston Saul