Eastern Europeans Quotes & Sayings

Like many Eastern European gangsters, he had been an official in the state security apparatus until the Communist regime collapsed. — Massimo Carlotto

MOST OF THE NATIONS OF the Middle East can be divided into those with long histories and no oil, and those that have lots of oil and very little history. With a few notable exceptions, both groups share a common feature: they were cobbled together by outsiders. The borders of the modern Middle East were drawn by Europeans after the First World War with no regard for the interests or backgrounds of the people who inhabited it. — Richard Engel

We should never forget that Hollywood was built by Europeans, and the old Jewish boys from Eastern Europe. — Maximilian Schell

I know a lot of Eastern Europeans, and because of what they have been through and what they have seen, they have an attitude where they are not easily fooled. — Francine Prose

My expertise was in public finance, particularly corporate taxation, since I had worked at the US Treasury. — Merton Miller

For two years now, my office has had the honour and the privilege of sponsoring seminars on the functioning of government in this country for Eastern Europeans. These seminars and exchanges have brought together representatives from such nations as Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech and Slovak Republic, Roumania, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Ukraine, all of them anxious to learn what makes a society as diverse as Canada work and how our institutions make it governable. — John Allen Fraser

I desire that your conjectures should not reach beyond your creative will. Could you create a god? Then do not speak to me of any gods. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Where the legs have gone the hind legs must follow — Leo Tolstoy

Our first duty to liberty is to keep our own. But it is also our duty - as Europeans - to keep alive in the Eastern as well as the Western half of our continent those ideas of human dignity which Europe gave to the world. Let us therefore resolve to keep the lamps of freedom burning bright so that all who look to the West from the shadows of the East need not doubt that we remain true to those human and spiritual values that lie at the heart of European civilization. — Margaret Thatcher

As in the past, therefore, eastern Europeans have had to compete with the West on a markedly uneven playing field, lacking local capital and foreign markets and able to export only low-margin foods and raw materials or else industrial and consumer goods kept cheap thanks to low wages and public subsidy. — Tony Judt

This game the Persian Magi did invent, The force of Eastern wisdom to express: From thence to busy Europeans sent, And styled by modern Lombards pensive chess. — Isaac Asimov

When I was young, I colored in the line drawings in vintage editions of the Oz books that had been handed down through generations in my family. This was a bad thing to do. — Andrew Rosenthal

What are you doing?" she finally asked. "Just thinking about my day. What are you doing?" "Trying to find Jace. Have you seen her?" "Trying to find her? Why? Is it because she's Albanian?" "I'm trying to ... wait ... what?" "You hate her because she's Albanian?" "I don't hate - " "Is it just Albanians you hate, or is it all East Europeans?" "What are you talking about?" "Wow. I had no idea you were like this." Another sister-Crow showed up. "Like what?" "Rachel hates Eastern Europeans." "I do not!" "So you hate all Europeans? Is that what you're saying?" "No!" "My God, Rachel." The other sister-Crow shook her head, disgust on her face as she walked off. "I'm really disappointed in you." "Wait ... " Rachel glared down at Annalisa. "Jesus Christ." "So you hate the Christian God, too? — Shelly Laurenston

What people still do not like to admit is that there were two crimes in the form of one. Just as the destruction of Jewry was the necessary condition for the rise and expansion of Nazism, so the ethnic cleansing of Germans was a precondition for the Stalinization of Poland. I first noticed this point when reading an essay by the late Ernest Gellner, who at the end of the war had warned Eastern Europeans that collective punishment of Germans would put them under Stalin's tutelage indefinitely. They would always feel the guilty need for an ally against potential German revenge. — Christopher Hitchens

The seeker's silence is the loudest form of prayer. — Swami Vivekananda

The New Deal never rethought the draconian racist immigration restriction policies of the 20s, of course, but its electoral base rested significantly on "ethnic" voters, whose activism was both hemmed in and rewarded by the Democrats. Southern and Eastern Europeans were included as secondary leaders of the new industrial unions, and as entitled citizens qualified for social security, unemployment compensation, and fair labor standards protections, even as workers of color were largely left out of key areas of the welfare state. — David Roediger

I might as well enquire," replied she, "why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character? — Jane Austen

The most exciting moment as an archaeologist happened when I was looking at the great archaeology site of Tannis, which of course we all know from 'Indiana Jones.' We got satellite imagery of the city of Tannis, we processed it, and literally from thousands of miles away from my lab in Alabama, we were able to map the entire city. — Sarah Parcak

The things you read will fashion you by slowly conditioning your mind. — A.W. Tozer

Spend any time in the real Italy, however, and you quickly realize that Italians don't really pick grapes much anymore, and they certainly don't stomp them either. They don't pick tomatoes - or olives - and they don't shear their sheep. Their tomatoes and olives are picked largely by underpaid Africans and Eastern Europeans, seasonal hires, brought in for that purpose - who are then demonized and complained about for the rest of the year. (Except when blowing motorists in the offseason - as can be readily observed on the outskirts of even the smallest Italian communities these days.) — Anthony Bourdain

As you know, I have always been curious about our immortality ... how it feels to live on and on through time ... I need speculate no longer, I have sampled eternity in Miss Campbell's fifth period "social studies" class. Three days on the concept of "manifest destiny," Vasile. THREE DAYS. I yearned to stand up, rip her lecture notes from her pallid hands, and scream, 'Yes, America expanded westward! Is that not logical, given that Europeans settled on the Eastern shore? What else were they to do? Advance vainly into the sea? — Beth Fantaskey

I'm in this whole flow of doing certain art pieces without commerce. — Jada Pinkett Smith

My photographs at best hold only a small length, but through them I would suggest and criticize and illuminate and try to give compassionate understanding. — W. Eugene Smith

Coffee and humanity both sprang from the same area in eastern Africa. What if some of those early ape-men nibbled on the bright red berries? What if the resulting mental stimulation opened them up to a new way of looking at old problems, much as it did Europeans? Could this group of berry nibblers be the Missing Link, and that memory of the bright but bitter-tasting fruit be the archetype for the story of the Garden of Eden? — Stewart Lee Allen

Like most Eastern Europeans, he was not amenable to the socialist ethic so many Israeli leftists still romanticized, despite the proven failure of Communism to solve any of the world's problems and its unenviable success in inventing many new ones. — Naomi Ragen

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

In silence more work can be done. The true experience of bliss is without words. — Mother Meera

Suspicion infused Alex's voice. "Okay? That's it?"
I looked back at him and smiled. "That's it. We disagree. It's done. We'll deal with whatever comes next."
He stood up, brows lowered over squinty eyes. "Did Lafitte ply you with brandy, or have the body snatchers been here? — Suzanne Johnson

I can only hold on to the things I want to lose. — Jonathan Safran Foer

During my campaign, I had come across a small number of (mostly) young men, who had strongly racist views. They told me they would only vote for a party that was willing to get rid of black and coloured people from this country. What struck me as strange is that they weren't bothered about the thousands of white Europeans arriving from Central and Eastern Europe. — Andrea Leadsom

It's total bullshit," he said. "The whole thing. Eighty percent survival rate and he's in the twenty percent? Bullshit. He was such a bright kid. It's bullshit. I hate it. But it was sure a privilege to love him, huh? — John Green

UKIP is natural party for Eastern Europeans — Przemek Skwirczynski

February
Boris Pasternak
It's February. Get ink. Weep.
Write the heart out about it, sing
Another song of February
While raucous slush burns black with spring.
Six grivnas* for a buggy ride
Past booming bells, on screaming gears,
Out to a place where drizzles fall
Louder than any ink or tears
Where like a flock of charcoal pears,
A thousand blackbirds, ripped awry
From trees to puddles, knock dry grief
Into the deep end of the eye.
A thaw patch blackens underfoot.
The wind is gutted with a scream.
True verses are the most haphazard,
Rhyming the heart out on a theme.
*Grivna: a unit of currency. — Boris Pasternak