Popular quotes about Europe! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
The United States has some people in Europe with whom we disagree on this matter and a large number of people in Europe, including governments in Europe, with whom we agree.
Douglas J. FeithThe same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.
Sam HarrisI think that in this globalised world, the local is going to become more and more important - it is a paradox. You see it in Western Europe more and more. Eastern Europe is still coming out of the Soviet uniform cultural era, but this kind of separation and nationalism is very obvious now in Western Europe.
Robert DessaixTurkey's path toward Europe started back in 1959, almost 50 years ago. But we have been pushed to the side ever since. Despite all the hurdles we will not deviate from our course towards Europe ย- even by one step.
Recep Tayyip ErdoganIf you think about it, in the most dramatic moments of its history Europe has always turned to philosophy and, in turn, philosophy has interrogated itself about the destiny of Europe as something that touches its very essence.
Roberto EspositoLet us assume that the Turks in whose ranks Europeans were fighting as well, even in high positions, would have conquered Vienna and Europe in 1683 instead of having been forced to withdraw. If the Mohammedans would have gained the victory at the time and Islam would have swept victoriously over Europe, then the Christian churches would have been depoliticized. (...) For the Turks were religiously tolerant, they allowed each religion to continue to exist, provided it was no longer involved in politics - otherwise it was finished.
Heinrich HimmlerBut sovereign debt is a wider question not only in Europe but across the globe. While every country is a unique case, I think it's not an issue of countries acting on their own. We need a more coordinated strategy not only in Europe but around the world.
George PapandreouThe Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648, was a series of conflicts that became the last great struggle of religious wars in Europe. It was fought almost exclusively on German soil...but before the war ended, it involved most of the nations of Europe. The underlying cause of the war was the deep-seated hostility between the German Protestants and German Catholics - with the Jesuits and Cardinal Richelieu, who was the real ruler of France, fanning the fires to accomplish their ends.
John DanielI 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 AdamsAs I wrote Working toward Whiteness, I came to see one historic task on the New Deal - and one in which it succeeded - as the fostering of fuller U.S. citizenship among immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and their kids. But this very achievement separated poorer and often despised immigrant workers from Europe and workers of color in unprecedented ways.
David RoedigerHaving viewed Europe as an extension and projection of itself, France now finds Europe developing a mind and identity of its own which embraces France but is not controlled by France.
Peter MandelsonWe are in an extremely dangerous situation. It was ignorant and ahistorical for Donald Trump to say that the EU will dissolve. He is a man of very little historical understanding. For example, when he accused his own intelligence community of using Nazi tactics against him, he was actually confusing the Nazis with East Germany's secret police, the Stasi. Trump also has no idea that for 70 years, it has been U.S. policy to support those who want to unite Europe. It is very dangerous that he is turning his back on Europe now.
Anthony GleesNot possessing definite geographical boundaries, at least in the East - its distinction from Asia is problematic, considering that two large countries, Russia and Turkey, stretch between the two continents - , Europe, from the beginning, has defined itself from the perspective of the constitutive specificity of its philosophical principles: the freedom of the Greek cities as opposed to the Asian despotic regimes. Although these principles were often contradicted and reversed into their opposite, the idea of Europe is inseparable from them.
Roberto EspositoActually, when I think about growing up, I feel most affected by two travels that I made working in cargo boats when I was 16 and 18. One of them crossed through the Mississippi and Baton Rouge and Mobile, Alabama, and another went all the way to Europe. On the last trip, I stayed in Europe for one year with $1,000, working everywhere I could, doing everything. Those years shaped me a lot and taught me the value of exploring different things.
Alejandro Gonzalez InarrituTrump has a clear goal: the division of Europe and the destruction of the European domestic market. The fact that Brexit propagandist Nigel Farage was the first European he received in his tower speaks volumes. That is why we must strengthen the European domestic market and work even more closely together in Europe. That is absolutely compulsory for Germany.
Martin SchulzModern Existentialism... is a total European creation, perhaps the last philosophic legacy of Europe to America or whatever other civilization is now on its way to supplant Europe.
William BarrettA Europe that qualifies its own values is not attractive in the eyes of Muslims. Europe must conduct itself as a strong partner, both intellectually and spiritually, and it must be convinced of its own advantages. This is the only way we will gain respect.
Walter KasperEvery writer owes something to a particular tradition he/she grew up in. But no serious writer - other than the militantly nationalist ones - would reduce his/her domain of influence to a single tradition. Furthermore, historical breaks are so common and large in Europe that there are ruptures in every tradition which then connect the same generations across national borders. Younger Eastern European writers, for instance, have more in common with other writers of the same age in Europe, than with the previous, communist-era generations in their own countries.
Aleksandar HemonIn '83 I started travelling round Europe with my slide show. It wasn't until I moved to Europe and got accepted in a big way in Berlin in the '90s that I got acceptance by the big art world in New York. I didn't really get to be known, or in the market, til '93 in New York.
Nan GoldinAs one looks back, one sees that the fall of the Berlin Wall opened the door to three developments - the Eurozone, which was crafted around German unification, the free movement of peoples within Europe, particularly people from the new democracies of Eastern Europe, and, more broadly, it opened the door to globalization.
Timothy Garton AshSo, I am a b*stard, and the English are b*stards. But the really bad news is that you are too. My vision of Europe would be Europe of b*stards for whom the question of legitimacy was a site of endless struggle and contestation.
Simon CritchleyThe Renaissance of Europe did not take place in the 15th century. Rather it began when Europe learned from the culture of the Arabs. The cradle of European awakening is not Italy. It is the Muslim Spain.
Robert BriffaultStay away from Europe, stay away from Japan, Australia. If you go to the Western world, you're gonna pay more money. You can spend five months in Bali for what you'd spend in one month in Europe.
Rita GelmanThe enterprise of America precedes that of Europe, as the industry of England precedes that of the rest of Europe.
Benjamin DisraeliIf you live in Europe . . . things change . . . but continuity never seems to break. You don't have to throw the past away.
Nadine GordimerI think the best and perhaps only sensible policy for the future is to prepare society for change and be prepared to adjust. In 25 years, we'll have a world with some 9 to 10 billion people that will require twice as much primary energy as today. We must embrace new science and technology in a more positive way than we presently do in Europe. This includes, for example, nuclear energy and genetic food production to provide the world what it urgently needs.
Lennart BengtssonAs one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future.
Alison LurieI know it feels like two steps forward and one step back, but we are making progress. In my lifetime, I have lived through one World War, I have lived through the end of Apartheid in South Africa, the pulling down of the Berlin Wall. I have experienced what I never thought I would have experienced, which is a pretty workable peace in Northern Ireland, and I experienced a unified Europe - until the Conservative government got its hands on the idea that in order to appease a few back-benchers they would hold a referendum, what a disastrous idea.
Patrick StewartBefore a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.
Noah WebsterI think that most people don't think in terms of an American revolution, they think in terms of a Russian revolution, or even a Ukrainian revolution. But the idea of an American revolution does not occur to most people. And when I came down to the movement milieu seventy-five years ago, the black movement was just starting, and the war in Europe had brought into being the "Double V for Victory" [campaign]: the idea was that we ought to win democracy abroad with democracy at home. And that was the beginning of an American revolution, and most people don't recognize that.
Grace Lee BoggsRomania will always defend the Roma's right to move freely in Europe. They are European citizens and as long as there is no evidence they broke the law they should enjoy the same rights of any European citizen.
Traian BasescuWeak, tea-drinking, effeminate, ineffectual--masters of India, robbers of South Africa, bedevillers of all Europe.
Christina SteadWe all have to accept accusations that we ignored the refugee crisis for far too long. The first time that I referred to the Mediterranean Sea as Europe's cemetery was in October 2013, when hundreds of people drowned off Lampedusa. Italians, Maltese, Greeks and Spaniards have been pleading for help for years. But nobody cared.
Martin SchulzWhen I started doing improvise music in Europe, in the beginning I thought the way that Europeans were interpreting the reconstruction of deconstruction of this thing that we call jazz - of course it's different than what Americans do, because Europeans have a different history, a different sensibility and so forth - the nature of the creative process itself it's the same; but what comes from that creative process is different, because you have a different history, you have a different society, different language.
Hamid DrakeI believe that the existing power structures in Europe and Northeast Asia are not sustainable through 2020.
John MearsheimerPILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
Ambrose BierceI can say across Europe that many principles that have been taken for granted here around free speech, and around civil liberties and an independent judiciary, and fighting corruption, those are principles that, you know, not perfectly but generally, we have tried to apply not just in our own country but also with respect to our foreign policy.
Barack ObamaThe virus is moving quite substantially into new locations. My attention is pretty much equally divided between Europe, the southern Balkans and Black Sea area, Africa and south Asia.
David NabarroProtestants are the more segmented group. Mainline churches - you have problems in the U.S., Europe, the Scottish Church, the Dutch Protestant Church, the state church in Norway. The evangelicals have been pro Israel, but a major effort is to bring them in on the Palestinian side. A huge problem and the problems are rising.
Manfred GerstenfeldBolivia historically made and still makes a living from natural resources. Before it was tin, but also silver, gold, and other minerals were plundered by many foreign countries. Europe after the United States.
Evo MoralesThe 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 KatchorSome among the European elite have sought out confrontation with us. As a consequence, we won't help Europe, although we could do so when it comes to the refugee question. A joint closure of borders would be essential. In this regard, the Russians would be 10 times more effective than the Europeans.
Sergey KaraganovPart of the coalition is intellectuals who have an idea of racial nationalism, which is very popular in right-wing populist movements in Europe. The alt-right believes in racially separate nation-states.
Chip BerletPresident Bush Sr. and Secretary Baker, way back when, told Gorbachev, "We are not going to advance NATO into Eastern Europe. We're not going to - we're not going to advance NATO into East Germany, if you allow the unification of Germany." Where is that pledge? Where is the logic behind a military alliance, devised in the time of communism, before the Berlin Wall fell, now being in the Ukraine, in Poland, in Estonia, in Latvia and Lithuania? I don't understand.
Rashid Khalidi