Quotes About Europe

So long as strategic nuclear weapons were the principal element of Europe's defense, the objective of European policy was primarily psychological: to oblige the United States to treat Europe as an extension of itself in case of an emergency.

Torn between obsessive insecurity and proselytizing zeal, between the requirements of Europe and the temptations of Asia, the Russian Empire always had a role in the European equilibrium but was never emotionally a part of it.

In recent decades, Europe has retreated to the conduct of soft power. But besieged as it is on almost all frontiers by upheavals and migration, Europe, including Britain, can avoid turning into a victim of circumstance only by assuming a more active role.

Era um sistema velho de milénios – vigorava já quando o Império Romano governou toda a Europa como unidade – e baseado não na igualdade soberana dos Estados, mas na presumível ausência de limite à soberania do imperador.

For one thousand years, the peoples of Europe had taken for granted that whatever the fluctuations in the balance of power, its constituent elements resided in Europe. The world of the emerging Cold War sought its balances in the conduct and armament of two superpowers: the United States across the Atlantic and the Soviet Union at the geographic fringes of Europe.

Rakousko, kdysi považované za jednu z nejsilnÄ›jÅ¡ích a nejlépe Ã…â"¢ízených zemí v EvropÄ›, se stalo zranitelným vlivem své polohy uprostÃ…â"¢ed Evropy: kdykoli se kontinent zatÃ…â"¢ásl, dolehla sem odezva. Mnohojazy?ný ráz Ã…â"¢íÅ¡e ji též ?inil snadným ter?em sílící vlny nacionalismu, síly, která byla jeÅ¡tÄ› o generaci dÃ…â"¢íve v podstatÄ› neznámá.

Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world

Russia will occupy most of the good food lands of central Europe while we have the industrial portions. We must find some way of persuading Russia to play ball.

The Poles, though intellectual, sympathetic, brave, and gifted with high personal qualities that have made them many friends, have been always deficient in collective wisdom; and there is probably no more astonishing antithesis in Europe than the Poles as individuals and the Poles as a people.

To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began--that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature.

Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.

Yes, what would Russia be without me?" he [Tsar Nicholas I] said to himself, again sensing the approach of the unpleasant feeling. "Yes, what would, not just Russia, but Europe be without me?" And he remembered his brother-in-law, the king of Prussia, and his weakness and stupidity and shook his head.

The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one powerful nation like Russia—barbaric as she is said to be—to place herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would save the world!

On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature.

European countries unresistingly submitted to the introduction of general military service--i.e., to a state of slavery involving a degree of humiliation and submission incomparably worse than any slavery of the ancient world.

The violent but narrow passions that pass under the name of patriotism are not the noblest forms of human and social emotions. The world, or the people who, unfortunately, have most to say in governing the world, believe no such thing, and will not believe it when the representatives of States meet again to decide how to fill up the graves which they helped dig in Europe.

The Sicilian language is the only one in Europe that has no future tense. The island's bitter legacy of conquest and revolt seems to have stunted its inhabitants' ability to conceive of a time outside this recurrent cycle. At

Whatever else may divide us, Europe is our common home; a common fate has linked us through the centuries, and it continues to link us today.

What followed seemed barely unbelievable, in the sense that Europe reeled from an assault that seemed impossible, heretical, demonic.

And it is also the story of Norman Kent, who was his friend, and how at one moment in that adventure he held the fate of two nations, if not of all Europe, in his hands; how he accounted for that stewardship; and how, one quiet summer evening, in a house by the Thames, with no melodrama and no heroics, he fought and died for an idea.

Had Napoleon succeeded in his conquest of Europe, and had he had time to consolidate his military-bureaucratic regime, the megamachine might have emerged, at least halfway toward its modern form, by the middle of the nineteenth century: indeed, even the bedraggled ideological aftermath of Napoleonism conjured up in the mind of young Ernest Renan a future not unlike that which we are now facing: dictatorship by a scientific elite.

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.

As a prisoner of conscience committed to peaceful transition to democracy, I urge Europe to apply economic sanctions against Ethiopia. What short-term pain may result will be compensated by long-term gain. A pledge to re-engage energetically with a democratic Ethiopia would act as a catalyst for reform.