Best 2109 quotes in «europe quotes» category

Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act which deprived a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

An artist who is driven by money is no longer driven by art

And I'll close by saying this. Because anti-Semitism is the godfather of racism and the gateway to tyranny and fascism and war, it is to be regarded not as the enemy of the Jewish people, I learned, but as the common enemy of humanity and of civilisation, and has to be fought against very tenaciously for that reason, most especially in its current, most virulent form of Islamic Jihad. Daniel Pearl's revolting murderer was educated at the London School of Economics. Our Christmas bomber over Detroit was from a neighboring London college, the chair of the Islamic Students' Society. Many pogroms against Jewish people are being reported from all over Europe today as I'm talking, and we can only expect this to get worse, and we must make sure our own defenses are not neglected. Our task is to call this filthy thing, this plague, this—this pest, by its right name; to make unceasing resistance to it, knowing all the time that it's probably ultimately ineradicable, and bearing in mind that its hatred towards us is a compliment, and resolving (some of the time, at any rate) to do a bit more to deserve it. Thank you.

André Malraux is known to have said that if the European Union had to be constructed anew, then he would start with culture.

An era was over and a new Europe was being born. This much was obvious. But with the passing of the old order many longstanding assumptions would be called into question. What had once seemed permanent and somehow inevitable would take on a more transient air. The Cold-War confrontation; the schism separating East from West; the contest between ‘Communism’ and ‘capitalism’; the separate and non-communicating stories of prosperous western Europe and the Soviet bloc satellites to its east: all these could no longer be understood as the products of ideological necessity or the iron logic of politics. They were the accidental outcomes of history—and history was thrusting them aside. Europe’s future would look very different—and so, too, would its past. In retrospect the years 1945-89 would now come to be seen not as the threshold of a new epoch but rather as an interim age: a post-war parenthesis, the unfinished business of a conflict that ended in 1945 but whose epilogue had lasted for another half century. Whatever shape Europe was to take in the years to come, the familiar, tidy story of what had gone before had changed for ever. It seemed obvious to me, in that icy central-European December, that the history of post-war Europe would need to be rewritten.

...architecture was what you had instead of landscape, a signal of loss, of imitation. Europe had it in spades...

Appartenir à une patrie, c'est aussi s'engager pour le siècle où l'on y vit" (source: émission sur la Russie sur Arte le 28/02/2012). "L'honneur d'un peuple appartient aux morts et les vivants n'en ont que l'usufruit - Georges Bernanos - Nos démocraties ne valent que par les hommes qui les servent. Elles ne sont donc jamais parfaites mais elles reposent sur un socle inamovible , selon Gandhi : “La véritable source des droits est le devoir.” Tout le reste est une question d’organisation. "Le passé renforce le présent et les pas hésitants qui conduisent à ce présent trouvent le chemin de l'avenir..." "TELL ME WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE AND I WILL TELL YOU HOW YOU ARE" Pour juger de la beauté d'un ouvrage, il suffit de le considérer en lui-même ; mais, pour juger du mérite de l'auteur, il faut le comparer à son siècle FONTENELLE ------------------------------------------- "La quantité de critiques reçues concernant tout sujet est inversement proportionnelle à la valeur exacte du sujet". (Louis de Potter, 1850)

Appartenir à une patrie, c'est aussi s'engager pour le siècle où l'on y vit (source: émission sur la Russie sur Arte le 28/02/2012). Nos démocraties ne valent que par les hommes qui les servent. Elles ne sont donc jamais parfaites mais elles reposent sur un socle inamovible. Le passé renforce le présent et les pas hésitants qui conduisent à ce présent trouvent le chemin de l'avenir. TELL ME WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE AND I WILL TELL YOU WHO YOU ARE

[As a very young man, I thought] of Europe as a place that could not exist except in the imagination, in glorious dreams, and through the careful lies of the silver screen.

Asia is an entertainment, Europe is a dream, America is an imprisonment and Rest is a nightmare.

By seeing how small the world is, I realize how capable I am. I can conquer anything. Anywhere. Anyone.

As they pedalled us down the long suburban road to the Chinese town a line of French armoured cars went by, each with its jutting gun and silent officer motionless like a figurehead under the stars and the black, smooth, concave sky––trouble again probably with a private army, the Binh Xuyen, who ran the Grand Monde and the gambling halls of Cholon. This was a land of rebellious barons. It was like Europe in the Middle Ages. But what were the Americans doing here? Columbus had not yet discovered their country.

Bethmann-Hollweg era davvero irremovibile non tanto sulle sue richieste territoriali – cercò, a un certo punto, di dissuadere il Kaiser dall’insistere sull’annessione del Belgio – quanto sull’intenzione di imporre una unione doganale sul continente: «è sottinteso che l’unione doganale dovrà rendere possibile il controllo della Germania sull’Europa»

Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today’s New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The “political revolution” that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower. The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the minimum wage—which sets a floor for other wages—tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.

Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies. Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? Two things result from this fact. I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be in itself a power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Specter of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.

Bulgaria, I reflected as I walked back to the hotel, isn’t a country; it’s a near-death experience.

Dead. Supposedly Suicide. That's how they'll kill Michael too. Make it look like a suicide or an accident of some sort.

Charles Martel’s victory at the Battle of Tours in 732 is recognised for having prevented the spread of Islam throughout Europe.

China failed to maintain its technological lead, and a similar failure throughout Asia to take advantage of the early exposure to that head start transformed precocity into a false dawn. Perversely, Asian improvements and adaptations of current (twentieth- to twenty-first-century) Western-developed technology are taken as further signs of lack of creativity.

Criminals beheaded in Palermo, heretics burned alive in Toledo, assassins drawn and quartered in Paris—Europeans flocked to every form of painful death imaginable, free entertainment that drew huge crowds. London, the historian Fernand Braudel tells us, held public executions eight times a year at Tyburn, just north of Hyde Park. (The diplomat Samuel Pepys paid a shilling for a good view of a Tyburn hanging in 1664; watching the victim beg for mercy, he wrote, was a crowd of "at least 12 or 14,000 people.") In most if not all European nations, the bodies were impaled on city walls and strung along highways as warnings. "The corpses dangling from trees whose distant silhouettes stand out against the sky, in so many old paintings, are merely a realistic detail," Braudel observed. "They were part of the landscape." Between 1530 and 1630, according to Cambridge historian V.A.C. Gatrell, England executed seventy-five thousand people. At that time, its population was about three million, perhaps a tenth that of the Mexica empire. Arithmetic suggests that if England had been the size of the Triple Alliance, it would have executed, on average, 7,500 people per year, roughly twice the number Cortes estimated for the empire. France and Spain were still more bloodthirsty than England, according to Braudel.

Do you know how fast you are walking? ... To get a close estimate, count the number of steps you take in a minute and divide by 30... :)

Demokracie předpokládá vzdělaného občana. Jestliže ten není již schopen získat si proti štvoucím masám mobilizovaným masovými médii většinu, představuje demokracie obecné nebezpečí. (kap. 11)

European historians have often, though not unanimously, assumed that European modern warfare was the one true path, a system that developed logically and inevitably from the nature of the advancing technology of guns. Since Europeans by their own definition were the most rational and logical of people, their mode of warfare was also the most rational and logical. Those who did not adopt it after seeing it were being deliberately irrational, or lacked the ability to advance their polity to the point where it could follow it.

Efforts to silence the people who raised their voice – whether through violence, intimidation or the courts – meant that three decades after the Rushdie affair there was almost no one in Europe who would dare write a novel, compose a piece of music or even draw an image that might risk Muslim anger. Indeed, they ran in the other direction. Politicians and almost everybody else went out of their way to show how much they admired Islam.

Étant la plus saisissante manifestation de l'art des constructions métalliques par lesquelles nos ingénieurs se sont illustrés en Europe, elle est une des formes les plus frappantes de notre génie national moderne. Being the most striking manifestation of the art of metal structures by which our engineers have shown in Europe, it [the Eiffel Tower] is one of the most striking of our modern national genius.

European identity, it seems, is only perceived by educated people. And that is sad, but it is a start.

Europe is haunted by the shadow of the Emperor. One senses his absence just as vividly as in former times one sensed his presence. Because the emptiness of the wound speaks, that which we miss knows how to make us sense it. Napoleon, eye-witness to the French Revolution, understood the direction which Europe had taken—the direction towards the complete destruction of hierarchy. And he sensed the shadow of the Emperor. He knew what had to be restored in Europe, which was not the royal throne of France—because kings cannot exist for long without the Emperor—but rather the imperial throne of Europe. So he decided to fill the gap himself. He made himself Emperor and he made his brothers kings. But it was to the sword that he took recourse. Instead of ruling by the sceptre—the globe bearing the cross—he made the decision to rule by the sword. But, “all who take up the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew xxvi, 52). Hitler also had the delirium of desire to occupy the empty place of the Emperor. He believed he could establish the “thousand-year empire” of tyranny by means of the sword. But again—“all those who take up the sword will perish by the sword”. No, the post of the Emperor does not belong any longer either to those who desire it or to the choice of the people. It is reserved to the choice of heaven alone. It has become occult. And the crown, the sceptre, the throne, the coat-of-arms of the Emperor are to be found in the catacombs…in the catacombs—this means to say: under absolute protection.

Europe needs a boundary like a fish needs a bicycle.

Even historians, who should know better, still seem addicted to the idea that nothing of any consequence occurred between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance.

Europeans can meet the challenges of the coming century only by pooling their efforts. We are convinced that what they need is one Europe — peaceful and democratic, a Europe that maintains all its diversity and common humanistic ideas, a prosperous Europe that extends its hand to the rest of the world. A Europe that confidently advances into the future.

Europeans do not understand North America but for the varying news outlets they read, most of which are in their own languages. Filled with their own cultural bias or lacklustre understanding, their analysis of the average North American lacks the most basic feeling. Simply because we can ride helicopters to our villas in the country or accumulate vast amounts of wealth and buy houses in Europe they think we care for nothing but money. The British especially, seeing their so-called brutish empire now long dead have only their incomprehensible accents to hold dear and berate the North American for not speaking true English. Yet it’s another sign of status and of money. But North Americans don’t care for money in the slightest. Most of us spend it the moment we acquire it whether in intelligence or not. Money is nothing to us but the idol and ideal of success. We are the true idealists. Of course we have set our ideal on the wrong idol; the only true idol for a man ought to be his passion, and a passion cannot be money since it is tangible and sensible.

Europe's rise is written in the terms of Christianity & Monarchy, Europe's decay in the terms of Republicanism, Progressivism & Godlessness.

Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity.

Europe has been betrayed. If we don't stand up for it, the continent will no longer be for those citizens living here.

Europe is not old; it's rotten. Most Europeans are ignorant, racist, greedy and lazy.

Even 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.

Everything was falling apart—the 1960s, rock and roll, the Wenners’ marriage. When Wenner gave Jane an ultimatum over the phone—come back from Europe or don’t ever come back—she returned to San Francisco. But Jane had fallen for Sandy. She packed her bags, and the Lhasa apso, and took a train to New York to live with Bull, moving in with his mother on East Sixty-First Street, surrounded by birds and harps and butterflies and needles.

Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Far from being Eurocentric, my analysis "exoticizes" Europe. Europe is historically aberrant. In some ways this was a historical accident, not entirely Europe's fault. But, in any case, it is nothing about which Europe should boast. Perhaps Europe and the world will one day be cured of this terrible malady with which Europe (and through Europe the world) has been afflicted.

Fallujah was a Guernica with no Picasso. A city of 300,000 was deprived of water, electricity, and food, emptied of most of its inhabitants who ended up parked in camps. Then came the methodical bombing and recapture of the city block by block. When soldiers occupied the hospital, The New York Times managed to justify this act on grounds that the hospital served as an enemy propaganda center by exaggerating the number of casualties. And by the way, just how many casualties were there? Nobody knows, there is no body count for Iraqis. When estimates are published, even by reputable scientific reviews, they are denounced as exaggerated. Finally, the inhabitants were allowed to return to their devastated city, by way of military checkpoints, and start to sift through the rubble, under the watchful eye of soldiers and biometric controls.

From the beginning, Europe assumed the power to make decisions within the international trading system. An excellent illustration of that is the fact that the so-called international law which governed the conduct of nations on the high seas was nothing else but European law. Africans did not participate in its making, and in many instances, African people were simply the victims, for the law recognized them only as transportable merchandise. If the African slave was thrown overboard at sea, the only legal problem that arose was whether or not the slave ship could claim compensation from the insurers! Above all, European decision-making power was exercised in selecting what Africa should export – in accordance with European needs. Pg. 77

Finally, Europe’s post-war history is a story shadowed by silences; by absence. The continent of Europe was once an intricate, interwoven tapestry of overlapping languages, religions, communities and nations. Many of its cities—particularly the smaller ones at the intersection of old and new imperial boundaries, such as Trieste, Sarajevo, Salonika, Cernovitz, Odessa or Vilna—were truly multicultural societies avant le mot, where Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims, Jews and others lived in familiar juxtaposition. We should not idealise this old Europe. What the Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski called ‘the incredible, almost comical melting-pot of peoples and nationalities sizzling dangerously in the very heart of Europe’ was periodically rent with riots, massacres and pogroms—but it was real, and it survived into living memory. Between 1914 and 1945, however, that Europe was smashed into the dust. The tidier Europe that emerged, blinking, into the second half of the twentieth century had fewer loose ends. Thanks to war, occupation, boundary adjustments, expulsions and genocide, almost everybody now lived in their own country, among their own people. For forty years after World War Two Europeans in both halves of Europe lived in hermetic national enclaves where surviving religious or ethnic minorities the Jews in France, for example—represented a tiny percentage of the population at large and were thoroughly integrated into its cultural and political mainstream. Only Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union—an empire, not a country and anyway only part-European, as already noted—stood aside from this new, serially homogenous Europe. But since the 1980s, and above all since the fall of the Soviet Union and the enlargement of the EU, Europe is facing a multicultural future. Between them refugees; guest-workers; the denizens of Europe’s former colonies drawn back to the imperial metropole by the prospect of jobs and freedom; and the voluntary and involuntary migrants from failed or repressive states at Europe’s expanded margins have turned London, Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan and a dozen other places into cosmopolitan world cities whether they like it or not.

For present-day politicians there are only political points to be made from such statements, and the larger the sin the larger the outrage, the larger the apology and the larger the potential political gain for sorrow expressed. Through such statements political leaders can gain the benefits of magnanimity without the stain of involvement: the person making the apology had done nothing wrong and all the people who could have received the apology are dead.

History is not always pessimistic for if World War II Europe has taught us anything it is that the rebuilding of cities is possible and the mending of a nation’s spirit can be achieved.

He began to walk back. The crowd had cleared a little, to swell again no doubt in a minute or two when the planeload arriving from Rome came through. He could make out several dark-skinned people, men and women of African, West Indian, and Indian origin. Adam had not always been a racist, but he was one now. He thought how remarkable it was that these people could afford to travel around Europe.

Here, the mother country is satisfied to keep some feudal rulers in her pay; there, dividing and ruling she has created a native bourgeoisie, sham from beginning to end; elsewhere she has played a double game: the colony is planted with settlers and exploited at the same time. Thus Europe has multiplied divisions and opposing groups, has fashioned classes and sometimes even racial prejudices, and has endeavoured by every means to bring about and intensify the stratification of colonised societies. Fanon hides nothing: in order to fight against us the former colony must fight against itself: or, rather, the two struggles form part of a whole.

Given that some ethnic groups—especially ones with high levels of ethnocentrism and mobilization—will undoubtedly continue to function as groups far into the foreseeable future, unilateral renunciation of ethnic loyalties by some groups means only their surrender and defeat—the Darwinian dead end of extinction. The future, then, like the past, will inevitably be a Darwinian competition in which ethnicity plays a very large role. The alternative faced by Europeans throughout the Western world is to place themselves in a position of enormous vulnerability in which their destinies will be determined by other peoples, many of whom hold deep historically conditioned hatreds toward them. Europeans' promotion of their own displacement is the ultimate foolishness—an historical mistake of catastrophic proportions.

...habían sido objeto de revueltas políticas, violentas disputas con sus vecinos y finalmente de invasión por una de las nuevas superpotencias mundiales. En medio de todo esto, odiar a un adversario se convirtió en algo completamente natural.

Having confronted the world with little except a battered typewriter and a certain resilience, he can now take posthumous credit for having got the three great questions of the 20th century essentially 'right.' Orwell was an early and consistent foe of European imperialism, and foresaw the end of colonial rule. He was one of the first to volunteer to bear arms against fascism and Nazism in Spain. And, while he was soldiering in Catalonia, he saw through the biggest and most seductive lie of them all—the false promise of a radiant future offered by the intellectual underlings of Stalinism.