Lafayette Quotes
More Lafayette Quotes
Lafayette valued reputation and glory, but cared little for the power that generally results from them. Having one day been asked who was in his opinion the greatest man of this age: "In my idea," replied he, "General Washington is the greatest man, for I look upon him as the most virtuous."
lafayette, gilbert du motier, marquis de— Jules Germain Cloquet, in Recollections of the Private Life of General Lafayette (1836), Vol. I, p. 24
Lafayette is a young man of royal birth, with liberal politics and what Jefferson later called "a canine appetite for fame." Someone said he was "a statue in search of a pedestal." But he was intoxicated with, [had] a rather theoretical love of, liberty. It was theoretical because liberty wasn't known to many Europeans. [Lafayette] was a great romantic and he fell in love with America, the concept of America that the French had. This wild new world where you could start the world over, to use Tom Paine's phrase.
lafayette, gilbert du motier, marquis de— Richard Norton Smith, quoted in Chronicle of the Revolution at PBS
Lafayette, nous voilà!
lafayette, gilbert du motier, marquis de— Lafayette, we are here!Charles E. Stanton, an aid to General John J. Pershing in an address before the tomb of Lafayette (4 July 1917). Pershing is often credited with the remark, sometimes upon arriving in France with the American Expeditionary Force, but he himself stated: "Many have attributed this striking utterance to me and I have often wished that it could have been mine, but I have no recollection of saying anything so splendid. I am sure that those words were spoken by Colonel Stanton and to him must go the credit for coining so happy and felicitous a phrase."
Lafayette, we are here!
— Spoken at the tomb of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, Paris (4 July 1917), as quoted in John H. George and Paul Boller, They Never Said It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 104; the quote is often misattributed to John J. Pershing.
The elimination of force at all costs is Utopian and the new movement which has arisen in the country and of whose dawn we have given a warning is inspired by the ideals which Guru Gobind Singh and Shivaji, Kamal Pasha and Reza Khan, Washington and Garibaldi, Lafayette and Lenin preached.
bhagat singh— As Quoted in B. R. Agarwala (1991). Trials of Independence. National Book Trust, India. p. 128. Part of Bhagat Singh's statement during his trial.
