Edouard Balladur Quotes

When I was campaigning, I told the people if nothing happens under my mandate it will still be a positive thing because my mandate will be used as a rupture between the past and the future.

Uncertainty is normal in the first few days of a new government.

People are genuinely excited about taking the country in another direction.

It is time Britain put its trust back into the Labour Party. I believe I am the candidate that can make this happen precisely because I am not associated with the past.

Arafat's departure has created an awesome opportunity.

The challenge is not to replace Obama but with who. It's not enough to just change up the uniform, if we don't change the team and the game plan, we won't save our country.

I also helped write the five-page statement of principles that Civic Forum issued in late November. That was the first public expression of what the new government wanted to do.

I don't think there's any serious discussion inside the Chinese government about liberalising. I don't think anything's going to change in China until enough Chinese say, 'We're not going to play this game any more.'

Mexico has experimented with political change since the late 1980s.

The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.

The American people... want change. They want big ideas, big reform.

I think the American public wants to see a change. They want a fresh start.

Soon, the Obama presidency will end, and America will have the chance to turn in a new direction.

It is going to take a long time to switch Egypt into a democracy.

For politics to change … culture must change too --- and that takes much more than dispatching troops, holding elections, and writing constitutions.

History is full of changings of the guard—some for the better, some for the worse.

We launched perestroika [openness and restructuring] with our eyes open. We foresaw the complexity and the special nature of that process, realizing that it would shake up thoroughly our entire society. We were not wrong.... As for the difficulties—and they do exist—we accept them as a natural expression of contradictions inherent in a transition period.

This government must go. It is our duty to make sure that it does go.

The pendulum does swing in the congressional picture.

We can’t change our government unless we change the people who run it.

… the most sacred right [revolution] to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.

I do not fear … rupture—rupture with habits of thought, with ideas, with behaviors of the past that have prevented us from advancing, from grasping the future between our two arms … I want a rupture with conformity … with half heartedness … with conservatism … with immobility. This rupture I believe necessary. This rupture I have betrothed myself to. This rupture the French people have approved. This rupture I will perform.

As times change, so government must change. We need a new government for a new century

Nothing is so common as to see a political upheaval pass practically unnoticed merely because the names of the leaders and their parties remain the same.

Citizens, did you want a revolution without revolution?