Quotes from Lajos Kossuth

Humility is the part of wisdom, and is most becoming in men. But let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest, the greatest quality of true manliness.

The power that is supported by force alone will have cause often to tremble.

Hungary is, in a word, in a state of WAR against the Hapsburg dynasty, a war of legitimate defence, by which alone it can ever regain independence and freedom.

Men like me, who merely wish to establish political freedom, will in such circumstances lose all their influence, and others will get influence who may become dangerous to all established interests whatsoever.

Nationality is the aggregated individuality of the greatest men of the nation.

The house of Austria has publicly used every effort to deprive the country of its legitimate Independence and Constitution, designing to reduce it to a level with the other provinces long since deprived of all freedom, and to unite all in a common sink of slavery.

My nomination to be Governor was not to gratify ambition.

I am a straightforward man.

It is chiefly in New York that I feel induced to urge this, because New York is, by innumerable ties, connected with Europe - more connected than several parts of Europe itself.

Even in political considerations, now-a-days, you have stronger motives to feel interested in the fate of Europe than in the fate of the Central or Southern parts of America.

Upon this the Hungarian ministers resigned, but the names submitted by the president of the council, at the demand of the king, were not approved of for successors.

I believe that the confidence of Hungary in me is not shaken by misfortune nor broken by my calumniators.

I must therefore implore your indulgence for a pretty long and plain development of my views concerning that cause which the citizens of New York, and you particularly, gentlemen, honour with generous interest.

I will not become a Napoleon nor an Alexander, and labour for my own ambition; but I will labour for freedom and for the moral well-being of man.

Now since France has three times in sixty years failed to obtain practical results from Political revolutions, all Europe is apt to press forward into new Social doctrine to regulate the future.

I consider that it is on instruction and education that the future security and direction of the destiny of every nation chiefly and fundamentally rests.