“It is unnecessary, for the Republic has never ceased to exist. I was the Republic.”

Reply in August 1944 to a statement of regret that the windows of the Hotel de Ville in Paris were not opened for the crowd outside cheering the reestablishment of the Republic. Quoted in The Atlantic, November 1960.
World War II

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Charles de Gaulle 46
eighteenth President of the French Republic 1890–1970

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