Popular quotes about Europe! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
In 2003, at the time I made my "Old Europe" comment, the center of gravity in NATO and Europe had long since shifted to the East. With the former Warsaw Pact countries joining NATO, the alliance has a different mix today. Some people were sensitive about my comment because they thought it was a pejorative way of highlighting demographic realities. Apparently they felt it pointed a white light at a weakness in Europe - an aging population. Europe has come some distance since World War II in becoming Europe.
Donald RumsfeldIt is not to save capitalism that we fight in Russia โฆ It is for a revolution of our own. โฆ If Europe were to become once more the Europe of bankers, of fat corrupt bourgeoisies we should prefer Communism to win and destroy everything. We would rather have it all blow up than see this rottenness resplendent. Europe fights in Russia because it [i.e., Fascist Europe] is Socialist. what interests us most in the war is the revolution to follow The war cannot end without the triumph of Socialist revolution.
Leon DegrelleThey [ French] still have an open border in Europe. And they have a Europe which doesn't have an integrated intelligence system like we do in the United States.
Michael LeiterIf the threat is jihadism - and it is - and the threat is the destruction of Syria so that all of these refugees are swamping into Europe and changing the whole character and politics of Europe, this is the time to unite to find a way out.
John F. KerryIf you go back a century in Europe, all over the place people were speaking different languages. There were dozens of languages in France and Italy, and they're all called French [and Italian], but they were not mutually comprehensible. They were different languages. And they have mostly disappeared in the last century or so. Some are being preserved, like Welsh, some are being revived, like Basque or Catelan to some extent. There are plenty of people in Europe who can't talk to their grandmother because they talk a different language.
Noam ChomskyWe believe in a free Europe, not a standardised Europe. Diminish that variety within the member states, and you impoverish the whole Community. We insist that the institutions of the European Community are managed so that they increase the liberty of the individual throughout the continent. These institutions must not be permitted to dwindle into bureaucracy. Whenever they fail to enlarge freedom the institutions should be criticised and the balance restored.
Margaret ThatcherI think that growing up in a crowded continent like Europe with an awful lot of competing claims, ideas, cultures, and systems of thought we have, perforce, developed a more sophisticated notion of what the word freedom means than I see much evidence of in America. To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that in Europe we're probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.
Douglas AdamsAn EU without Britain, without 1 of Europe's strongest powers, a country which in many ways invented the single market, and which brings real heft to Europe's influence on the world stage which plays by the rules and which is a force for liberal economic reform would be a very different kind of European Union.
David CameronEurope is being subjected to the kinds of programs that devastated Latin America for many years. Latin America has thrown them out and is pulling out: It's successful; it's democratizing; it's economically developing; and it's free from the shrapnel of US imperialism for 25 years. Meanwhile, Western Europe is destroying itself systematically, destroying itself going in the opposite direction.
Noam ChomskyThe world has changed around Europe. It is not only the migration crisis that has shown Europe is not up for challenge.
Viktor OrbanIn the preface to his great History of Europe, H. A. L. Fisher wrote: "Men wiser than and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave ..." It seems to me that the same is true of the much older [geological stratigraphical] history of Europe.
D. V. AgerMore than forty years of Communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe resulted in an unhappy and artificial division of Europe. It is this dark chapter of European history that we now have the opportunity to close.
Anders Fogh RasmussenIt's too low, and if Europe wants to be a force in the world it needs to be more than a moral and political and economic force, which Europe is because it shares many of our values and demonstrates them around the world. But it has to have the military power that goes with that as well.
Ashton CarterWe in Austria have always had lots of immigration. But when one starts, as happened in Europe last year, to open the borders and to transport people northwards as fast as possible, then of course it's not just Syrians who come. People from all around the world then see their chance to quickly come to Europe.
Sebastian KurzThere is this huge Roma problem in Europe. There are a lot of Romas who are discriminated against in countries like the Czech Republic or Hungary. They are an ethnic minority that in Europe everyone loves to hate.
Evgeny MorozovIf Europe thinks Jews will return to the days where we were forced to mark our products - you can forget it. De-legitimization of parts of Israel by Europe is the new anti-Semitism. The old anti-Semitism led to the destruction of our people in gas chambers. We will not allow the new anti-Semitism to hurt us.
Ayelet ShakedNew York feels like a sublet of Europe. And Europe is a sublet of New York. Put it that way. It's so accessible. When I was in LA, I felt so far away from my home. Home, for the moment, is here until it's not. I like to move around with my work. I feel it's a great way to learn about life, about new cultures, and to learn. We'll see where the wind takes me.
Sean MahonThe US and Europe are committing suicide in different ways. In Europe it's austerity in the midst of recession and that's guaranteed to be a disaster. There's some resistance to that now. In the US, it's essentially off-shoring production and financialization and getting rid of superfluous population through incarceration.
Noam ChomskyTo be influential in tomorrow's world, to defend our values and our development model, France needs Europe and Europe needs France.
Francois HollandeWe value our relations with Europe, which we have jointly developed over the past decades, and Europe remains our main trading partner. It is my hope that we will normalise these relations in the near future
Dmitry MedvedevYou could say that the vote to withdraw from Europe is, it's really a vote of the British middle class, the working class, to withdraw from the U.S. neoliberalism that has been running Europe for the last ten years.
Michael HudsonI dont want a Europe that is just a free-trade area attached to NATO. Even less do I want a Europe where its everyone against everyone, and social and fiscal dumping replaces solidarity.
Segolene RoyalI did publish a Bill once called "Common Sense" with a new constitution for Europe called the "Commonwealth of Europe," setting it all out - what it's rights were, how it would work. And I think that that will be where is has to go. But I'm not anti-European, I'm just a democrat, a very committed democrat. I don't see why the hell I should obey a law made by someone I didn't elect and can't remove.
Tony BennThe truth is that we have long had a multi-track Europe with very different objectives. The traditional differences between the north and the south in fiscal and economic policy are far less problematic than those that exist between Eastern and Western Europe. In the south and east, China is steadily gaining more influence, such that a few EU member states no longer dare to make decisions that run counter to Chinese interests. You see it everywhere: China is the only country in the world that has a real geopolitical strategy.
Sigmar GabrielEurope is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense.
Oriana FallaciSo, in "Melting Pot" the children (about a third of whom were kids of color) sang the line, "America was the new world and Europe was the old," in one stroke eradicating the narratives of indigenous persons for whom America was hardly new, and any nonwhite kids whose old worlds had been in Africa or Asia, not Europe.
Tim WiseI believe that Europe without Britain at the heart will be less reform-driven, less open, less international Europe.
Jose Manuel BarrosoOnce the Eastern Bloc collapsed, what I call 'historical spontaneity' prevailed and the countries that were subject to Soviet control naturally gravitated to the West. That's where they sought their security; I don't think there was a way to avoid that. If we tried to exclude them, we would have today not one Europe, we would have three Europes: one in the West, one in the middle and one in the East, and the middle would be insecure and a tempting target. The insecurity felt [today] by Eastern Europe would be replicated on a much larger and more consequential scale.
Zbigniew BrzezinskiEurope will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.
Margaret ThatcherEven in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun of science talents and courage against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt. It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will soon recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.
Thomas JeffersonWe had very good discussions on current security challenges and NATO's continued adaptation to meet them. Canada is a committed ally and a capable contributor to international security. We appreciate your quick decision to deploy forces, planes and ships to strengthen our collective defence in view of Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine, as well as your contribution to the international anti-ISIL coalition. Canada plays a major part in our decision-making and helps keep the vital bond between Europe and North America strong.
Jens StoltenbergWho rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island controls the world.
Halford MackinderFrom whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.
Abraham LincolnIn Europe, the houses and the apartments are getting smaller. So there is no need to increase the screen because the apartment is becoming smaller.
Jean-Luc GodardThe great Jewish scientists and philosophers of the last few generations - Spinoza, Einstein, Freud, Robert Oppenheimer and others - were natives of Europe and America.
David Ben-GurionIn the U.S., ironically, people work longer hours in the U.S. than they do in Europe or in any other industrialized country. They seem utterly oblivious to May Day, don't really know what it is - our own history.
Eric DrookerMore than any other in Western Europe, Britain remains a country where a traveler has to think twice before indulging in the ordinary food of ordinary people.
Joseph Lelyveldlove as a passionโit is our European specialtyโmust absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself.
Friedrich NietzscheAll of Europe is tremendously integrated now; perhaps from all those years of colonization. Everybody that they've colonized has come to the mainland, so you'll have a racially diverse audience as well. You'll have many Middle Easterners, Asians, Africans, from seven to ninety sitting in the audience, and the really incredible thing is that they all know the music. I don't mean they just know a song here and there. They know the music. They are a very educated audience.
Patti AustinIt's been President Clinton's dream that we'll have finally a fully integrated Europe.
Warren ChristopherFirst, separate ground, sea and air warfare is gone forever. This lesson we learned in World War II. I lived that lesson in Europe. Others lived it in the Pacific. Millions of American veterans learned it well.
Dwight D. EisenhowerAcknowledge that a more closely integrated Europe is no longer an unqualified American interest.
Richard PerleWe have two hundred languages in Europe. Two hundred languages! Count them! I know you won't!
Eddie IzzardWorldwide travel is not compulsory. Great minds have been fostered entirely by staying close to home. Moses never got further than the Promised Land. Da Vinci and Beethoven never left Europe. Shakespeare hardly went anywhere at all-certainly not to Elsinore or the coast of Bohemia.
Jan MorrisSven-Gรถran Eriksson, confronted with arguably Europe's weakest qualifying group, has a problem; it is the same one that afflicted Jacques Santini, the France coach at the time, before Euro 2004. Not that there are no easy matches at international level; rather, there are no hard ones. In qualifying for the 2004 European Championship finals, France faced a group not of death, but of sun-block, comprising Slovenia, Israel, Cyprus and Malta, which they duly won by ten points, averaging 3.6 goals per game. We all know what happened next.
Martin SamuelThe funny thing is, nationalism only could have come about in Europe after the invention of printing. You could have this thing that was a book in a vernacular language, and you could imagine there were other readers of this book who you couldn't see, but they were a theoretical union of readers who all use the same language. That is kind of a prerequisite for a national fantasy. You need that thing, and it's a strange thing.
Ben KatchorThe paintings that laughed at him merrily from the walls were like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of. Gone were the flat, thin surfaces. Gone was the sentimental sobriety. Gone was the brown gravy in which Europe had been bathing its pictures for centuries. Here were pictures riotously mad with the sun. With light and air and throbbing vivacity. Paintings of ballet girls backstage, done in primitive reds, greens, and blues thrown next to each other irreverantly. He looked at the signature. Degas.
Irving Stone