How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over two hundred varieties of cheese?

This remark is widely attributed to Charles de Gaulle as a wry comment on the difficulty of imposing political uniformity on France. It is commonly linked to his experience of French political fragmentation—especially in the Fourth Republic era and during his own efforts to stabilize governance—when coalition politics, strong regional identities, and ideological divisions made consensus hard to sustain. The “two hundred varieties of cheese” functions as a shorthand for France’s deep local particularism and cultural diversity, suggesting that a nation so varied in everyday tastes and traditions will naturally resist a single, monolithic party line.

The quip uses France’s famously diverse regional cheeses as a shorthand for the country’s deep pluralism—of local identities, tastes, traditions, and political temperaments. De Gaulle’s point is that a society so culturally and socially variegated is ill-suited to rigid uniformity in politics; attempts to impose a single party line would clash with the lived reality of difference. The humor also carries a serious constitutional implication: stable governance in France must accommodate competing factions and regional sensibilities rather than pretend they can be erased. In this reading, “cheese” stands for the stubborn particularities that make centralized ideological conformity unrealistic.