France Archives - Chloe Anagnos

I had to spend my first time on the European continent in Paris. I studied French from grades 7 – 12 and even earned a minor in college! I wish I would have had the time to study abroad when I was younger, but I’m grateful that I was able to experience Paris in the winter of 2018. (Not to mention I was able to find such a cheap flight from the States!)

There’s something magical about wandering the halls of the Louvre and warming up with a café au lait during a light snowfall.

From the art to the food, the fashion and awe-inspiring architecture, the City of Lights has a little something for everyone.

Here are 21 quotes to inspire you to experience one of my favorite European cities:

“America is my country and Paris is my hometown.” – Gertrude Stein

“An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.” – Thomas Jefferson

“He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime.” – Victor Hugo

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” – Ernest Hemingway

“I had forgotten how gently time passes in Paris. As lively as the city is, there’s a stillness to it, a peace that lures you in. In Paris, with a glass of wine in your hand, you can just be.” – Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“I like The Eiffel Tower because it looks like steel and lace.” – Natalie Lloyd

“I’m not a complicated girl; she laughed, I just want to run away with you, rob a bank, fall in love and eat ice creams in Paris.” – Michael Faudet

“Just add three letters to Paris, and you have paradise.” – Jules Renard

“London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.” – G. K. Chesterson

“Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.” – Willa Cather

“Paris is always a good idea.” – Audrey Hepburn

“Paris is not a city; it’s a world.” – King Francis I

“Paris is the only city in the world that starving to death still considered art.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

“Secrets travel fast in Paris.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

“That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me.” – Marion Cotillard, Midnight in Paris

“There is but one Paris, and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good – a world of good.” – Vincent Van Gogh

“To know Paris is to know a great deal.” – Henry Miller

“We’ll always have Paris.” – Howard Koch

“When good Americans die, they go to Paris.” – Oscar Wilde

“Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.” – Honoré de Balzac

On Saturday, February 9, 2019, the Yellow Vest protests marked their thirteenth week of marching in the streets.

American independent journalist Ford Fischer of News2Share was on the ground in Paris, where he live-streamed the protest and witnessed things that American media consumers have essentially been shut out from.

Fischer’s footage showed working-class Frenchmen doing everything from setting cars on fire and confronting the police, to monologing about the elitist tax policies pushed out by the Macron administration. So amidst the riots, the political spin from the French government, and the foreign media silence regarding this massive social movement, what is the truth about the Yellow Vest movement?

This Isn’t a Typical Left-Right Political Issue

In a recent interview on the Remso Martinez Experience podcast, Fischer explained that the Yellow Vest movement as a whole can’t be properly categorized as being Left wing or Right wing in political terms most Americans would comprehend.

“This is like if Antifa teamed up with the Charlottesville rioters” Fischer stated, continuing that while there are some limited government, anti-tax sentiments among the movement, there is also a communist/socialist element in the form of the European Black Block, showed up with “Karl Marx flags” and other communist propaganda.

These various grassroots interest groups are primarily united on their opposition to Macron’s increased gas taxes that harm the well being of the working class, and for them that is good enough to get along for the time being.

Americans Might Want to Rethink Their Support

While many Americans right-of-center have posted photos of themselves in Yellow Vests in solidarity with the movement, there seems to be something lost in translation. While American supporters provide a cultural sympathy for the anti-taxation aspect of the movement, they seem to either ignore or not know the full extent of that anti-tax aspect of things.

Fischer stated “they don’t have a problem with socialism” per se, and a majority is fine with increased taxes on the wealthiest of income earners in order to subsidize the rest, thus simply continuing the welfare state. So from this view, the movement seems more Occupy Wall Street and less Tea Party.

Macron is Worried

Criticisms of Macron and his wife’s massive spending have been a rallying cry among the movement, who claim Macron is a puppet of the rich. In order to try and ease tensions and show that he is sympathetic to the protestors, Macron has launched a series of in-person and televised town halls, but many are saying that this attempt is a cry of desperation.

According to the Guardian:

Macron’s “Great Debate” – a vast, unprecedented nationwide exercise in consulting citizens on how to fix France’s problems – is the latest attempt by the centrist president to try to bring an end to almost three months of spectacular anti-government revolt by the gilets jaunes or yellow vest movement.

Macron’s idea to run thousands of local meetings was at first likened by some critics to the ill-fated consultation exercise by King Louis XVI in 1789. The king sought to quell popular discontent but instead kickstarted the French revolution. Four years later he lost his head at the guillotine.

A Man had Their Hand Blown off

While the American public hasn’t seen much of the protests from the mainstream media, what they did see during the first few weeks of the movement was simply non-violent protests. In the last several weeks, however, property damage has increased and the number of injuries and arrests has been on the rise. An extremely graphic video was captured from this past Saturday that showed a man’s hand was blown off by an exploding smoke grenade, which no one as of now can determine if it was launched by a cop or by a protestor. This level of violence and animosity seems to increase the longer this movement continues and the government still doesn’t make any concessions.

It’s Spreading Across Europe

In the early stages of the movement, the populist connection reached across the pond to England, where Brits took the concept of the Yellow Vest protests and adopted it into more of a pro-Brexit, anti-EU movement. Unlike the protests in France, the British have seemed to take a break from hitting the streets, but the increase in violence over in France might encourage them to grab their vests once again.

21 Inspiring Quotes About Paris

Five Things to Know About the Yellow Vest Protests