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Charles de Gaulle was the French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II, served as President of France from 1959 to 1969, and effectively founded the Fifth Republic. He was a man of grand ambitions and enormous national pride — a towering figure, literally and figuratively, who navigated France through decolonization, political upheaval, and the reinvention of French identity on the world stage. He was also, evidently, a man who understood that the truest measure of a nation's complexity might be found in its cheese.

June 4 is National Cheese Day, celebrating one of humanity's oldest and most diverse foods. The number de Gaulle cited — 246 — has been updated over the years; France is now said to produce over 400 varieties. The point, however, is unchanged: a country that has managed to produce that much disagreement about something as basic as cheese is a country that will always be difficult to govern. The quote works on National Cheese Day as a celebration of the beautiful, maddening diversity of human taste. It is funny, and it is also profound: the same national character that makes France ungovernable makes it extraordinary. Disagreement and variety, it turns out, are features.