Simone Veil

“My claim as a woman is that my difference is taken into account, that I am not forced to adapt to the male model.”

“A woman who does not feel free cannot raise free children.”

“The Holocaust is the memory of us all.”

“Europe will be the great adventure of the 21st century. It is up to the young to build it.”

“I don't like the term 'duty of memory'. The only 'duty' is to teach and to transmit.”

“You can always try to push back intolerance but you never win completely.”

“Men and women are not interchangeable, but they are equal.”

“Secularism guarantees freedom of conscience, that of believing or not believing.”

“When women understand that they hold the power, then everything will change.”

“The law does not forbid, it only says what is possible.”

“Auschwitz is like a kind of cancer from which one never really recovers.”

“We are all collectively responsible for our past, and we must own up to this past.”

“Generosity is accepting that others are not like us.”

“I am an optimist. But a worried optimist.”

“I am for a federal Europe, the only conception of the future for Europe.”