#europe

New ideas should confront old ideas. We must refer to the example of Europe. People have fought to make Europe what it is today. Freedom is not something that is served up on a plate. ↗

— Tahar Ben Jelloun

#europe #example #fought #freedom #ideas

Margaret Thatcher was fearful of German unification because she believed that this would bring an immediate and formidable increase of economic strength to a Germany which was already the strongest economic partner in Europe. ↗

— Douglas Hurd

#because #believed #bring #economic #economic strength

I do not separate France from Europe. ↗

— Lionel Jospin

#france #i #i do #separate

In the report made on behalf of the C.G.T. we affirmed that the Peace Treaty should, in accordance with the spirit of workers' organizations, lay the first foundations of the United States of Europe. ↗

— Leon Jouhaux

#affirmed #behalf #europe #first #foundations

The arts are very alive in Ireland, so that had its influence on me. But I consider myself European, really. ↗

— Michael Fassbender

#arts #consider #european #had #i

The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity. ↗

— Carl Jung

#christianity #europe #gospel #heard #heathen

And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#camus #communism #czechoslovakia #david-szmulevski #east-germany

I just completed a tour in Europe. I played every night. This requires traveling some days for six hours in a van or a train or a car. After six weeks of that, I checked into the hotel and just fell apart. ↗

— Lee Konitz

#apart #car #checked #completed #days

I remain optimistic. What we've seen in Europe and the rest of the world is that freedom has a much stronger attraction than radical fundamentalism. ↗

— Gijs de Vries

#europe #freedom #fundamentalism #i #much

In a multipolar world, there must be more powers capable of taking responsibility, the U.S. and Europe must be able to unite to achieve peace in the Middle East. ↗

— Dominique de Villepin

#achieve #capable #east #europe #middle