Quotes & Sayings About Europe

Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts. — Mary McCarthy

Stalin is one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. He began as a small clerk, and he has never stopped being a clerk. Stalin owes nothing to rhetoric. He governs from his office, thanks to a bureaucracy that obeys his every nod and gesture. It's striking that Russian propaganda, in the criticisms it makes of us, always holds itself within certain limits. Stalin, that cunning Caucasian, is apparently quite ready to abandon European Russia, if he thinks that a failure to solve her problems would cause him to lose everything. Let nobody think Stalin might reconquer Europe from the Urals! It is as if I were installed in Slovakia, and could set out from there to reconquer the Reich. This is the catastrophe that will cause the loss of the Soviet Empire. — Adolf Hitler

I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years. I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting. But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn't get a job. — Mickey Rourke

The global centre of power shifted to Europe only between 1750 and 1850, when Europeans humiliated the Asian powers in a series of wars and conquered large parts of Asia. By 1900 Europeans firmly controlled the world's economy and most of its territory. In 1950 western Europe and the United States together accounted for more than half of global production, whereas China's portion had been reduced to 5 per cent.4 — Yuval Noah Harari

Some people go to the West and claim they are gays and that their lives are at risk in the Gambia, in order for them to be granted a stay in Europe. — Yahya Jammeh

National Socialist Germany wishes for peace because it recognises the simple fact that no war would be likely to substantially to ameliorate the state of distress in Europe. The distress would probably be made the greater thereby. If only the leaders and rulers had wanted peace, the people would never have wished for war. — Adolf Hitler

Germany is an economic giant but a political midget, and with the end of the Cold War she has started to muscle her presence throughout Europe and the world. — Christo

Europe has been at peace since 1945. But it is a restless peace thats shadowed by the threat of violence. Europe is partitioned. An unnatural line runs through the heart of a very great and a very proud nation [Germany]. History warns us that until this harsh division has been resolved, peace in Europe will never be secure. We must turn to one of the great unfinished tasks of our generationand that unfinished task is making Europe whole again. — Lyndon B. Johnson

The thing that makes [Bob] Kennedy so good is that he doesn't have a fear of losing. He was willing to go to Europe and get hammered. — Frank Shorter

I think it is high time that Europe starts to understand that we do not rule the world anymore, and that some former European imperial powers can no longer impress their will on to others in far away places, and we must accept that football has moved away from being a European and South American sport: it has become the World Sport that billions of fans are excitedly following every week, everywhere in the world. — Sepp Blatter

Compared to America or Europe, God isn't a big part of our lives here. I don't know anyone here who goes to church when he's had a rough divorce or is going through depression. We go out into nature instead. — Bjork

We are so accustomed to thinking of European civilization as the vanguard of the world that we forget that for much of human history, the European peninsula was at the receiving end of the miracles of the East. Over the millennia, innovations such as Mesopotamian agriculture, the Phoenician alphabet, Greek philosophy, and Arab bookkeeping all flowed from east to west. Both Christianity and Islam followed the same route. So did wheat, olives, sugar, and spices. — Michael Krondl

The crisis of democracy in the West is not the result of falling in love with another system. In Europe and America people who are disillusioned with democracy do not dream about the Chinese model or any other form of authoritarian rule. They do not dream about government that controls Internet and puts in prison those daring to disagree. — Ivan Krastev

I do voiceovers, but being on-camera and selling something? I wasn't really interested. And then I thought, well, wait a minute. Everybody's selling something. When you turn on the tube ... And then if you go to Europe or Asia, everyone is selling something. All the guys that don't want to be seen selling something here are selling something there. So I thought what the hell? — John Slattery

Ernst was still in the Eastern Zone, about ninety kilometres from Berlin, when the truck emerged so inexplicably out of nowhere that it seemed to have been created by the rain itself. — Mordecai Richler

I believe that the Lord has a plan for each of us that's better than anything we can imagine, even if that plan isn't obvious to us at every stage. He prepared me for this over a long period of time - in lower-profile locker rooms and the grocery store and in Europe, through all the personal tragedies and in spite of the people who doubted me along the way. — Kurt Warner

The emergence of a unified Europe is one of the most revolutionary events of our time. — Henry A. Kissinger

Africa is the second-largest continent, a landmass second from Asia. It also is the second most populated continent, with 900 million people. In fact - coming back to the land mass - Africa is so big that you could fit in the continental United States, China, and the entire Europe into Africa and still have space. — Euvin Naidoo

In the U.S. and Europe, there has been a lot of creative hobby innovation, and that's great. — Erik Hersman

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! — Leo Tolstoy

Every summer my father gave us this incredible vacation, in the Philippines, Thailand, Europe - wherever. — Marie-Chantal Claire

Soon a whole guild of low-priced shrine keepers around Europe named their own pope - Boldface the Relatively Shameless, Discount Pope of Prague. The price war was on [ ... ] The Retail Pope would offer cheesy bacon toppings on the Host with communion and the Discount Pope would counter with topless nun night for midnight mass. — Christopher Moore

She spoke seven languages, including Mandarin and Polish, and was finishing up her master's in Intercultural Misunderstanding, which just has to be Europe's next growth industry. — Michael Lewis

I guess, - a greater number of the 26 or so albums that I've made are known in Europe than they are in America. — David Bowie

It [the Sudetenland] is the last territorial claim that I have to make in Europe. — Adolf Hitler

Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions — Frantz Fanon

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it's a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don't listen. — Chet Baker

And then in 1956 or 1957 my family went over to Europe and I moved over with them, and immediately people in Europe thought my perspective on that issue was 100% correct. — Warren Farrell

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a Colossus shall we be when the Southern continent comes up to our mark! What a stand will it secure as a ralliance for the reason & freedom of the globe! I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. So good night. I will dream on, always fancying that Mrs Adams and yourself are by my side marking the progress and the obliquities of ages and countries. — Thomas Jefferson

At first the rebels seemed to play the role of Don Quixote, courageously tilting at invincible windmills. Yet within eighty years the Dutch had not only secured their independence from Spain, but had managed to replace the Spaniards and their Portuguese allies as masters of the ocean highways, build a global Dutch empire, and become the richest state in Europe. The secret of Dutch success was credit. The — Yuval Noah Harari

Since Europe is dependent on imports of energy and most of its raw materials, it can be subdued, if not quite conquered, without all those nuclear weapons the Soviets have aimed at it simply through the shipping routes and raw materials they control. — Barbara Amiel

The myth of the dead Indian goes back to the Protestant settlement of the U.S. The Pilgrims wanted to start a new life in America. They wanted to believe that in some sense they had come to a new Eden and that they could leave history behind in Europe. So they convinced themselves that this land had no history, that this was "virgin" land. This made the Indians' presence inconvenient. — Richard Rodriguez

America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself. — Oscar Wilde

We will stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. We will stop that nuclear arms race that could happen in the Middle East. We will also make that Putin knows we have brigades in eastern Europe to make sure we deter his aggression. Peace through strength works. — Bobby Jindal

We have many times led Europe in the fight for freedom. It would be an ignoble end to our long history if we tamely accepted to perish by degrees. — Anthony Eden

There is a saying of my adoptive ancestors. Though he performs a miracle, or two miracles, if he refuses the third miracle, it is not as profit to him. I shall dine at the Court of France tonight, and in the course of that evening, acquire the royal consent for O'LiamRoe and myself to stay as long as we please. For, to be perfectly frank," said Lymond, gently reflective, "to be perfectly frank, I can't wait to sink my teeth into the most magnificent, the most scholarly and the most dissolute Court in Europe, which so lightly slid out The O'LiamRoe, Chief of the Name, on his kneecaps and whiskers. — Dorothy Dunnett

The only way we will be going to Europe is if the club splash out and take us all to EuroDisney. — Dean Holdsworth

Talking about a materialistic thing, I get about 13 times more royalties from Europe than I do from America. — Elliott Carter

First, separate ground, sea and air warfare is gone forever. This lesson we learned in World War II. I lived that lesson in Europe. Others lived it in the Pacific. Millions of American veterans learned it well. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Pharisaism became Talmudism ... But the spirit of the Ancient Pharisee survives unaltered. When the Jew ... studies the Talmud, he is actually repeating the arguments used in the Palestinian academies. From Palestine to Babylonia; from Babylonia to North Africa, Italy, Spain, France and Germany; from these to Poland, Russia and eastern Europe generally, ancient Pharisaism has wandered ... — Louis Finkelstein

Content is not mere facts, drummed into tender little minds under the relentless pounding of rote learning. Content--even the date of the Quebec Act, Confederation, or the Battle of Vimy Ridge, or the name of the first prime minister-- is cultural capital, a basic requirement of life that every Canadian needs to comprehend the daily newspaper, to watch the TV news or a documentary, or to argue about politics and cast a reasonably informed vote. In an increasingly complex and immediate world, cultural capital must also include some knowledge of Europe, Africa, and Asia, too. — J.L. Granatstein

The commendable efforts of preachers to Europe is that Superstition regarding work and wealth was broken. Everybody now knows that wealth comes only from hard work, not from some superstitious beliefs. — Sunday Adelaja

YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. — Ambrose Bierce

In Europe, war is a disease which has been in the family for generations: no one is surprised when it makes another leap. Even the patient only attends to it with part of his mind. — Storm Jameson

Most of the states of Europe had no prospect of social transformation, and thus little ability to rival or counter the Nazis and the Soviets. — Timothy Snyder

I love Forever 21. A friend of mine introduced it to me when I was in New York. I was borrowing a dress and said, 'Where's that from?' and she said, 'Oh, it's Forever 21,' and I said, 'What, I've never heard of that!' and she said, 'Oh it's this American brand,' and I thought, 'Why doesn't England have that; why doesn't Europe have one?' — Amber Le Bon

I would eventually leave the business in 1999 to work full-time as a writer, but during the previous decade, I would advise French businessmen on how to succeed in Germany; tell Americans what to do in Eastern Europe; show the Spanish how to become more like the Americans. I spent one particularly haunting year advising bankers in Mexico. — Matthew Stewart

[Soho] is all things to all men, catering comprehensively for those needs which money can buy. You see it as you wish. An agreeable place to dine; a cosmopolitan village tucked away behind Piccadilly with its own mysterious village life, one of the best shopping centres for food in London, the nastiest and most sordid nursery of crime in Europe. Even the travel journalists, obsessed by its ambiguities, can't make up their minds. — P.D. James

United States of Europe will resemble USA, where the Poland state will be a lot more like Dakota than New York. — Przemek Skwirczynski

I am fully aware of the concept of political revolutions. After all, that is what we hoped might happen in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, but what actually happened was capitalist restoration. — Tariq Ali

In Europe, where climate change absolutism is at its strongest, the quasi-religion of greenery in general and the climate change issue in particular have filled the vacuum of organised religion, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as a form of blasphemy. — Nigel Lawson

In Ireland, there are the same fossils, the same shells and the same sea bodies, as appear in America, and some of them are found in no other part of Europe. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Today again the teacher is the important thing, but on the other hand anti-Semitism is growing today. No doubt about it. All over the world, especially in Europe, and it's true they begin with anti-Israeli attitudes and then it's so strong that it runs over and becomes anti-Semitic. — Elie Wiesel

Europe has resurrected its pagan gods. — Subhash Kak

Indeed, there were those who maintained that Russia's defeat at the hands of the Japanese was itself the result of a Jewish conspiracy. According to S. A. Nilus, a secret Jewish council known as the Sanhedrin had hypnotized the Japanese into believing they were one of the tribes of Israel; it was the Jews' aim, Nilus insisted, 'to set a distraught Russia awash with blood and to inundate it, and then Europe, with the yellow hordes of a resurgent China guided by Japan'. The — Niall Ferguson

I was a National-Socialist and I remain one ... The Germany of today is no longer a great nation, it has become a province of Europe. — Joachim Peiper

Paper money is like dram-drinking, it relieves for a moment by deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it. Were not this the case, and could money be made of paper at pleasure, every sovereign in Europe would be as rich as he pleased. But the truth is, that it is a bubble and the attempt vanity. Nature has provided the proper materials for money: gold and silver, and any attempt of ours to rival her is ridiculous ... — Thomas Paine

Going to Europe as a budding cook opened my eyes to food in a different way. When I got to Italy, the first thing I did was put my little basil plants in the ground and watch them turn into big, healthy bushes. — Frances Mayes

But the remarkable thing about the beetles was their sensitivity to all the grammar and directives and slogans and even unstated desires of the ant world, which they learned to manipulate. They first memorized the proper antenna-vibration and foreleg-tap which the ants themselves used to request food. The poor workers, busy going here and there and back again all day and never getting a chance to think, automatically assumed that these fearsome strangers had been authorized by the Central Committee since they knew the password, and so they regurgitated a drop or two of fruit juice on cue, much the same as when one is traveling across Europe or Asia on the train and a person in uniform requests one's passport, one's ticket, takes them away, and comes back, or else does not come back, having sold them; a badge and a superior manner can obtain anything in this world. — William T. Vollmann

Europe believes that providing clear labelling for genetically modified food is a consumer right, but such practice is absolutely opposed by the vast majority of states in the U.S. — Zac Goldsmith

Fascism is a revolutionary force, it wants to destroy the established order and take its place - take its money, its businesses, everything it has because, to these people, the governing class in Europe is hesitant, ineffective, effete. So, destroy it. — Alan Furst

If you're a big Hollywood star, you make one movie a year at the most. I can make five in Europe. — Franco Nero

If educators were really understanding of that, they'd say, "You know what? Forget about bilingual, we're going to do multilingual education." So children are ready for the new millennium. We're way behind compared to countries in Europe. If we were multilingual, imagine how much you would learn about your own culture, about the sensibilities of what's important in your own culture. — Sandra Cisneros

I believe the main solution is to gain the trust of Europe and America and to remove their concerns over the peaceful nature of our nuclear industry and to assure them that there will never be a diversion to military use. — Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Every time I go to Europe, I remember that James Dean never saw Europe, but yet I see his face everywhere. There's James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe - windows of the Champs Elysees, discos in the south of Spain, restaurants in Sweden, t-shirts in Moscow. My life was confused and disoriented for years by his passing. My sense of destiny destroyed - the great films he would have directed, the great performances he would have given, the great humanitarian he would have become, and yet, he's the greatest actor and star I have ever known. — Dennis Hopper

We had very good discussions on current security challenges and NATO's continued adaptation to meet them. Canada is a committed ally and a capable contributor to international security. We appreciate your quick decision to deploy forces, planes and ships to strengthen our collective defence in view of Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine, as well as your contribution to the international anti-ISIL coalition. Canada plays a major part in our decision-making and helps keep the vital bond between Europe and North America strong. — Jens Stoltenberg

Europe cannot survive another world war. — Christian Lous Lange

There is the melancholy of Europe. There is the romantic malaise. Feeling sad is almost a form of deepness. — Mathieu Amalric

I raced locally for a year, went to Europe the year after and went to the Olympics the year after that. — Taylor Phinney

We need economic growth in Europe and we need to find a solution for the excessive interest rates that are making it difficult for many countries to get their own debt under control. — Martin Schulz

By the end of the nineteenth century, the stereotype of the ugly American - voracious, preachy, mercenary, and bombastically chauvinist - was firmly in place in Europe. — Simon Schama

In the countries of Europe, one after another, the gentleman has been ousted by politicians and entrepreneurs, as materialism has given rewards to the sort of cunning incompatible with any kind of idealism. — Richard M. Weaver

The first time I ever saw people of any color was when D-Day left from my hometown in England, to go and free Europe from the war. And there was every color you could imagine, and I'd not seen that in England. — Richard Dawson

A genocide in Africa has not received the same attention that genocide in Europe or genocide in Turkey or genocide in other part of the world. There is still this kind of basic discrimination against the African people and the African problems. — Boutros Boutros-Ghali

If Jurgen Klinsmann thinks that the best way for his team to be successful is if his young players go to Europe, there is nobody in the world who can argue with that. That is his opinion, whether you agree with it or not. — Tim Howard

It might be the destiny of the Jewish race," he said, "to be the bridge between Asia and Europe, to bring the spirituality of Asia to Europe and the vitality of Europe to Asia." At — Barbara W. Tuchman

...the whole of American life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. — Olaf Stapledon

There are evidences of a very great art in Europe as long as twenty-five thousand years ago, and in Egypt as far back as sixty thousand years. Money had nothing to to do with the production of these treasures. Money will have nothing to do with the art of the future. — Henry Miller

A hack writer who would have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tried out a few of the old proven 'sure-fire' literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy. — William Faulkner

Croatia did not want Europe to be divided as to the start of Croatia's EU entry talks. — Stjepan Mesic

America and Western Europe are on a moneymaking, pleasure-mad spree unparalleled in the history of the world. God is generally ignored or ridiculed. Church members in many cases are only halfhearted Christians. Judgment is coming. — Billy Graham

In Europe there's been a kind of social contract. It's now declining, but it has been largely imposed by the strength of the unions, the organised work force and the relative weakness of the business community (which, for historical reasons, isn't as dominant in Europe as it has been here). European governments do see primarily to the needs of private wealth, but they also have created a not insubstantial safety net for the rest of the population. They have general health care, reasonable services, etc. We haven't had that, in part because we don't have the same organised work force, and we have a much more class-conscious and dominant business community. — Noam Chomsky

Today, American women bear an average of 2.2 children that live to adulthood. Across most of Europe, women bear even fewer young. — Helen Fisher

In America and Europe, it was said, people know what is going to happen when they turn on the water tap or flick on the light switch. In India, a land of few safe assumptions, chronic uncertainty was said to have helped produce a nation of quick-witted, creative problem-solvers. — Katherine Boo

The barbarian invasion put an end, for six centuries, to the civilization of western Europe. It lingered in Ireland until the Danes destroyed it in the ninth century; — Bertrand Russell

The torture of animals, especially cats, was a popular amusement throughout early modern Europe. The power of cats was concentrated on the most intimate aspect of domestic life: sex. Le chat, la chatte, le minet mean the same thing in French slang as 'pussy' does in English, and they have served as obscenities for centuries. — Slavoj Zizek

What the Nazis did to the Jews in Europe, plantation owners and law enforcement [officers] were doing to the African-Americans. — Morris Dees

When we were first together, when you first brought me here to this beautiful place, you used to say you were glad you found a napoletana, remember? You said the northerners were sane and orderly and hardworking and maybe more honest, but that without the south, Italy would have too many brains and not enough heart. It would be like Europe having only Germany and Austria - no Spain, no France, no Italy. It would be a world of scientists without singers. I thought it was romantic. What happened to the man who said those things? — Roland Merullo

Afro-Americans. Which is but a wedding, however, of two confusions, an arbitrary linking of two undefined and currently undefinable proper nouns. I mean that, in the case of Africa, Africa is still chained to Europe, and exploited by Europe, and Europe and America are chained together; and as long as this is so, it is hard to speak of Africa except as a cradle and a potential. Not until the many millions of people on the continent of Africa control their land and their resources will the African personality flower or genuinely African institutions flourish and reveal Africa as she is. — James Baldwin

Thus one of Europe's most serious crises will be ended, and all of us, not only in Germany but those far beyond our frontiers, will then in this year for the first time really rejoice at the Christmas festival. It should for us all be a true Festival of Peace. — Adolf Hitler

I do not separate France from Europe. — Lionel Jospin

Multiple political parties are a fact of life throughout Europe and most of the West. Today the only countries without strong multiparty political systems are the United States and a number of third world military dictatorships. — Thomas Naylor

What President Bush did in his doctrine of preemptive strike and in his war in Afghanistan and in Iraq was to turn even his allies in Europe negatively toward America. — Louis Farrakhan

The Nation State as such is totally a construction: what we feel for it in terms of habits, traditions, countryside or nature could exist without the notion of Nation. — Janne Teller

The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained in one block and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world. The voice of the Rothschilds prevailed ... Therefore they sent their emissaries into the field to exploit the question of slavery and to open an abyss between the two sections of the Union. — Otto Von Bismarck

We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied peoples joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history. — Ronald Reagan

I'm amazed to find those countries are in Europe. — Tony Pulis

Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical monuments of the East
above all, those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe
we discover there many a truth, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy. — Victor Cousin

China is very entrepreneurial but has no rule of law. Europe has rule of law but isn't entrepreneurial. Combine rule of law, entrepreneurialism and a generally pro-business policy, and you have Apple. — Marc Andreessen