“Nothing great is done without great men, and they are great because they wanted it.”
On ne fait rien de grand sans de grands hommes, et ceux-ci le sont pour l'avoir voulu.
in Vers l’armée de métier.
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Charles de Gaulle 46
eighteenth President of the French Republic 1890–1970Related quotes
“Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.”
William Blake
(1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist
Great Things Are Done
1800s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1807-1809)
“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”
Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.
Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1
Variant: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
Context: We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and — if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it — we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Circles
“We want great alteration, but we want nothing new.”
William Cobbett
(1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist
Political Register (2 November 1816), pp. 454–55
1810s
“The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait.
Part II
A variant, "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime," has appeared as a quotation of Balzac; but it may have originated in a paraphrase in The Oil Barons: Men of Greed and Grandeur (1971) by Richard O'Connor, p. 47: "Balzac maintained that behind every great fortune there is a great crime." It also appears at the beginning of the novel "The Godfather," published two years earlier.
Le Père Goriot (1835)
“Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.”
Martha Graham
(1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer
As quoted in The Runner's Book of Daily Inspiration : A Year of Motivation, Revelation, and Instruction (1999) by Kevin Nelson, p. 11.