# France

France (French:, officially the French Republic (République française, pronounced, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland and Italy to the east, and Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The country's 18 integral regions (five of which are situated overseas) span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres (248,573 sq mi) and a total population of 67.08 million. France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Its current head of state is President Emmanuel Macron, and its current head of government is Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice. France, including its overseas territories, has the most number of time zones of any country, with a total of 12.

## Quotes
### 17th century

* The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.
** Francis Bacon, "Of Seeming Wise", in Essays (1625); Brian Vickers (ed.) The Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. 389.
* And threat'ning France, plac'd like a painted Jove, Kept idle thunder in his lifted hand.
** John Dryden, Annus Mirabilis (1667), stanza 39

### 18th century

* Gay, sprightly, land of mirth and social ease Pleased with thyself, whom all the world can please.
** Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller (1764), line 241. (Of France).
* I hate the French because they are all slaves and wear wooden shoes.
** Oliver Goldsmith, Essays (ed. 1765), 24. Appeared in the British Magazine, June, 1760. Also in Essay on the History of a Disabled Soldier. Dove—English Classics.
* Une nation de singes à larynx de perroquets.
** A nation of monkeys with the throat of parrots.
** Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, Note to Mirabeau (1789)
* Providence has given the French nation precisely two instruments, two arms, so to speak, with which it stirs up the world – the French language and the spirit of proselytism that forms the essence of the nation's character.
** Joseph de Maistre, Considerations on France (1796), Ch. II

### 19th century

* Tous les anciens peuples de la Gaule réunis en un seul peuple s’embrassent au nom des mêmes aïeux; et, comme ils ont une origine commune, ils vivront sous les mêmes lois et partageront les mêmes destinées.
** All the ancient peoples of Gaul reunited as a single people embrace one another in the name of the same ancestors; and as they have a common origin, they live under the same laws and partake in the same destiny.
*** Jean-Pierre-Louis de Fontanes, “Discours du Président du Corps Législatif, 3 Germinal an XII”, Le Moniteur Universel, № 184, dimanche, 4 Germinal an XII de la République Française, 25 Mars, 1804. (Page 846 of the Port-au-Prince copy)
* France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
** Matthew Arnold, The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems, "To a Republican Friend" (c. March 1848)
* A Frenchman comes here to make money, and that is about all that need be said of him. He is only a Frenchman. He neither learns our language nor loves our country. His hand is on our pocket and his eye on Paris. He gets what he wants and, like a sensible Frenchman, returns to France to spend it.
** Frederick Douglass, Our Composite Nationality (Boston, Massachusetts, 7 December 1869)

### 20th century

* France had been the cradle of anarchism, fathered for a long time by some of her most brilliant sons, of whom Proudhon was the greatest.
** Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931)
* France above all!
** Charles Maurras, Action Française, 25 March 1938.
* I have never liked France or the French, and I have never stopped saying so.
** Adolf Hitler, The Political Testament of Adolf Hitler (15 February 1945)
* France has no friends, only interests.
** Attributed to Charles de Gaulle
* Toute ma vie, je me suis fait une certaine idée de la France.
** Translated: "All my life I have had a certain idea of France".
** Charles de Gaulle, opening sentence of his Mémoires de guerre.
* La France a perdu une bataille, mais la France n'a pas perdu la guerre.
** Translated: "France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war".
** Charles de Gaulle, Proclamation, June 18 1940.
* France cannot be France without greatness.
** La France ne peut être la France sans la grandeur.
** Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre (1954)
* O France, the time of reproach has passed and we have closed like a book; o France, the day of reckoning is at hand. So prepare to receive from us our answer!
** Mohamed Fawzi, Kassaman (1962)
* France is the land of the inner psyche. The inner expertise. They are wonderful confessives. But when I was young what impressed me most was their high seriousness about literature. Often humorless. But high.
** Hortense Calisher Interview with The Paris Review (1987)
* First of all, let's dispense with this absurd stereotype that the French are rude. The French are not rude. They just happen to hate you. But that is no reason to have bypass this beautiful country, whose master chefs have a well-deserved worldwide reputation for trying to trick people into eating snails. Nobody is sure how this got started. Probably a couple of French master chefs were standing around one day, and they found a snail, and one of them said: "I bet that if we called this something like 'escargot,' tourists would eat it." Then they had a hearty laugh, because "escargot" is the French word for "fat crawling bag of phlegm."
** Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need (1991), New York: Fawcett Columbine, p. 131

### 21st century

* Which is the funniest language? It's French, isn't it?
** Sacha Baron Cohen, as quoted in "War" (28 February 2003), Da Ali G Show.
* The creation of Modern France through expansion goes back to the establishment of a small kingdom in the area around Paris in the late tenth century and was not completed until the incorporation of Nice and Savoy in 1860. The existing "hexagon" was the result of a long series of wars and conquests involving the triumph of French language and culture over what once were autonomous and culturally distinctive communities. The assimilation of Gascons, Savoyards, Occitans, Basques, and others helped to sustain the myth that French overseas expansionism in the nineteenth century, especially to North and West Africa, was a continuation of the same assimilationist project.
** George M. Fredrickson, Race, Ethnicity, and National Identity in France and the United States: A Comparative Historical Overview (8 November 2003)
* According to current birthrate projections, France will be a majority Muslim country anyway in about 50 years... I get a lot of e-mails from Americans who think that Europeans are spineless. And I think they're right.
** Pat Condell, Islam in Europe, 2007-08-17, from YouTube, transcript
* The Trump-Cruz police state exists. It's called France.
** Eli Lake, Bloomberg (2016)
* We need to give priority to the French in their own country
** Marine Le Pen French election: Macron and Le Pen clash in TV presidential debate (April 21, 2022)
* Our country, our nation is built by two institutions, the state and the language. A language whose epicenter today is no longer on these banks of the Seine, but probably much more towards the Congo River basin.
** Emmanuel Macron - Macron lashes out at Zemmour: “Our identity is not built on narrow-mindedness"

## See also

* French people
* French Colonial Empire
* Kingdom of France

## External links

* Wikijunior:Europe/France on Wikibooks
* Works related to Portal:France on Wikisource
* France travel guide from Wikivoyage
* Encyclopedic article on France on Wikipedia
* Media related to France on Wikimedia Commons
* The dictionary definition of France on Wiktionary