Quotes About Europe

History, in Renaissance Europe of the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, was not a story of progress. It was largely a series of disasters.

In the Middle Ages, most people in other parts of the world who actually knew anything about northern Europe at all considered it an obscure and uninviting backwater full of religious fanatics who, aside from occasional attacks on their neighbours ('the Crusades'), were largely irrelevant to global trade and world politics

Fascination with the question of social inequality was relatively new in the 1700s, and it had everything to do with the shock and confusion that followed Europe's sudden integration into a global economy, where it had long been a very minor player.

At a time when actual governance in Europe was as broken and fragmented as it could possibly be, its intellectuals were busying themselves arguing about the exact division of powers within a single, grand, unified, imaginary system of cosmic administration.

Still, Lincoln went on to insist, what made the United States different from Europe, indeed what made its democracy possible, was

If we really want to understand the origins of the modern world economy, the place to start is not in Europe at all. The real story is of how China abandoned the use of paper money.

since Roman times, Europe had been exporting gold and silver to the East: the problem was that Europe had never produced much of anything that Asians wanted to buy, so it was forced to pay in specie for silks, spices, steel, and other imports.

while we are used to assuming that there's something natural or inevitable about the existence of corporations, in historical terms, they are actually strange, exotic creatures. No other great tradition came up with anything like it.170 They are the most peculiarly European addition to that endless proliferation of metaphysical entities so characteristic of the Middle Ages—as well as the most enduring.

what we'll see is not only that indigenous Americans – confronted with strange foreigners – gradually developed their own, surprisingly consistent critique of European institutions, but that these critiques came to be taken very seriously in Europe itself.

History, in Renaissance Europe of the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, was not a story of progress.

The European conception of individual freedom was, by contrast, tied ineluctably to notions of private property. Legally, this association traces back above all to the power of the male household head in ancient Rome, who could do whatever he liked with his chattels and possessions, including his children and slaves.

He did not like Europe, which he regarded as a lesser continent, populated with people significantly greedier and more materialistic than Americans. It was a place, he noted, where

Mr. Ford, here is our new plant," Lord Perry, who was the head of Ford in Europe, said proudly. "Where is the water?" the old man asked. "There isn't any water," Lord Perry replied. "Well, let's get out of here," Ford said. "I don't even want to look at it." That had ended the ceremony. Ford had driven off, and they had torn down the plant and moved it to a deep-water site.

The two men spoke in German, although von Hessen, who had spent years living in Italy, could also speak Italian

This was the beginning of Hitler's new-style diplomacy. His victories in Central Europe were won without the sword – they were won by power politics and opportunism, by bluff, by coercion, by psychological operations and by nerve-war. On each occasion he carefully gauged his potential enemies. He satisfied himself that the western powers would not fight, provided he made each claim sound reasonable enough. The west was weak and unready, and he was not.

Today, after the Holocaust, it is seldom recalled how anti-Semitic the Europe of 1938 tended to be. When Ribbentrop journeyed to Paris with much pomp in December to sign the joint declaration first suggested by Hitler to François-Poncet, Bonnet begged him not to flood France with more German Jews as they already had enough of their own. ('In fact,' Ribbentrop informed Hitler, 'they are considering Madagascar for this purpose.')

Hitler dourly remarked to Wiedemann – as the adjutant recorded a few months later – 'I'm not here to ensure peace in Europe; I'm here to make Germany great again. If that can be done peacefully, well and good. If not, we'll have to do it differently.' He

I'm not here to ensure peace in Europe; I'm here to make Germany great again. If that can be done peacefully, well and good. If not, we'll have to do it differently.

For whatever reason, speed enforcement in the U.S. is a bigger deal than elsewhere in the world. In Europe, police seem to be more concerned about preventing accidents and less consumed with the passion to write speeding tickets.

I mean no disrespect to the gentlemen of the bench, but it is no secret that our system of justice, praised throughout Europe for its severity and its swiftness, is a terrible and fearful thing, and no man, guilty or innocent, wishes to stand before it.

My God, I'd rather go to Europe than go to heaven.

Governments grow as God declines, in both Europe and the United States

God is back and Europe as a whole still doesn't get it. It is our biggest single collective cultural and intellectual blind spot.

On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners.