UMP Group - Information about this group of members of the French National Assembly, including news, portraits of representatives, committees and delegations.
The Party's Over - In disarray after their third successive electoral disaster, de Gaulle's political successors face an uncertain future.
French Election - The Guardian and the Observer report on the French election. Links to a series of articles.
Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in
opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.
-- Sydney Smith A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.
-- James Reston Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
-- Charles Schultz Black holes are where God divided by zero.
- Steven Wright To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being.
-- Tom Robbins Politics "Nobody minds having what is too good for them." (Jane Austen) Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
-- B.F. Skinner To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
-- Oscar Wilde Politics
There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.
-- Fred Hoyle Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable. -- Oscar Wilde If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
-- Anne Bradstreet I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-- Anonymous "I fear we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Politics "The easiest kind of relationship is with ten thousand people, the hardest is with one." (Joan Baez) He who dies a thousand deaths meets the final hour with the calmness of one who approaches a
well remembered door.
-- Heywood Brown The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. What men need is as much knowledge as they
can organize for action; give them more and it may become injurious. Some men are heavy and
stupid from Politics
A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.
-- St. Augustine "Failure is not an option!" (Ed Harris, as Gene Kranz, Apollo 13) "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." (Oscar Wilde) He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.
-- John Stuart Mill "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." (William Blake) Politics "A friendship that exacts oneness of opinion and conduct is not worth much." (Mohandas Gandhi, In Search of the Supreme) When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the
problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
-- Buckminster Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them.
-- Richard Strauss, on conducting Politics
The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy - give one and take ten.
-- Mark Twain Don't be so humble - you are not that great.
- Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat Epperson's law:
When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably something his wife can beat him at. A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you're in deep water.
-- Sidney Goff The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the
first half.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881) Politics "Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships." (Sharon Stone) Few things are harder to put up with than a good example.
- Mark Twain It is amazing at how small a price may the wedding ring be placed upon a worthless hand; but, by
the beauty of our law, what heaps of gold are indispensable to take it off!
-- Douglas Jerold, 1858 Politics
Teach a parrot the terms "supply and demand" and you've got an economist.
-- Thomas Carlyle When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe We need a president who's fluent in at least one language.
-- Buck Henry Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.
- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
-- Mark Twain Politics I've been asked to say a couple of words about my husband, Fang. How about 'short' and 'cheap'? -- Phyllis Diller "I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn't bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn't have any brains. I didn't know what I was doing there. That's w Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own
language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Politics
You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they
do.
-- Olin Miller Jimmy Carter as President is like Truman Capote marrying Dolly Parton. The job is just too big for
him.
-- Rich Little The fate of love is that it always seems too little or too much.
-- Anonymous "We have so little presumption that we should like to be known in the world, even to those who come after when we are no more. We have so little vanity that the esteem of five people, say six, amuses The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is
not read.
-- Oscar Wilde Politics Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
-- Soren Kierkegaard My Alma mater was books, a good library . . . . I could spend the rest of my life reading, just
satisfying my curiosity.
--Malcolm X What if it was cats who invented technology... would they have tv shows starring rubber sqeak
toys?
-- Douglas Coupland Politics
"There is no such thing as a person that nothing has happened to, and each person's story is as different as his fingertips." (Elsa Lanchester) One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passersby
see only a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney and continue on their way.
-- Vincent Van Gogh "The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour." (Karl Marx) Hell is other people.
- Jean-Paul Sartre Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
-- H. L. Mencken Politics True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is
always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.
-- Friedrich Nietzsch >From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some
day I intend reading it.
-- Groucho Marx The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
-- Lucille S. Harper Politics
Ah Mozart! He was happily married - but his wife wasn't.
-- Victor Borge "Fake is as old as the Eden tree." (George Orson Welles) "Humans beings can always be relied upon to assert, with vigor, their god-given right to be stupid." (Dean Koontz, Seize the Night) I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
-- W. C. Fields Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
- H. M. Warner, founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927 Politics "A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery." (James Joyce) The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by
trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by l I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never
be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
-- Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Politics
blah "You shall find out how salt is the taste of another man's bread, and how hard is the way up and down another man's stairs." (Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321) Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite
without any wish to act.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
-- Adolf Hitler "Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) blah "Ability wins us the esteem of the true men; luck that of the people." (François VI Duke (duc) de La Rochefoucauld, 1616-80) Politics The only thing worse than a man you can't control is a man you can.
-- Margo Kaufman "I offer images; I conjure memories of freedom that can still be reached ... But, we can only open the doors. We can't drag people through. I can't free them unless they want to be free--more than any I think, therefore I'm single.
-- Female philosopher Politics
What's new? Most of my wife. "Courage is found in unlikely places." (John Ronald Reuel Tolkien) There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good
marriage
-- Martin Luther "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." (Thomas Jefferson, to Archibald Stuart, 1791) >From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea--written in red on every
beachhead form Australia to Tokyo--There is no substitute for victory!
-- General Douglas MacArthur Politics "People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say." (Kurt Vonnegut) One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: "Give little, give seldom, and above all,
give grudgingly." Otherwise, what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of
sexual Don't anthropomorphize computers -- they hate it.
-- Anonymous Politics
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear." (George Orwell) Courage is the price that Love exacts for granting peace.
-- Amelia Earhart "Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come." (Perry Paxton) The only weapon that becomes sharper with constant use is the tongue.
-- Anonymous Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, It is a
thing to be acheived.
-- William Jennings Bryant Politics "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach) Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love,
but no friendship.
-- Oscar Wilde When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of
the world.
- George Washington Carver Politics
