"Cheese-eating surrender monkeys", sometimes shortened to "surrender monkeys", is a derogatory description of French people, referring to their cheeses and military history, that was coined in 1995 by Ken Keeler, then-writer for the television series The Simpsons. The phrase has since entered two Oxford quotation dictionaries. After being popularized by National Review journalist Jonah Goldberg, it has frequently been used by journalists and academics. The phrase was particularly used in the run-up to the Iraq War, since France was opposed to military intervention in Iraq.
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Famous quotes containing the words surrender and/or monkeys:
“Peace is normally a great good, and normally it coincides with righteousness, but it is righteousness and not peace which should bind the conscience of a nation as it should bind the conscience of an individual; and neither a nation nor an individual can surrender conscience to another’s keeping.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)
“The monkeys winked too much and were afraid of snakes. The zebras,
supreme in their abnormality; the elephants with their fog-colored skin
and strictly practical appendages”
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972)