Quotes & Sayings About Poland

The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese
and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.
Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. — Eric Hoffer

He had not colored the leaves in yet, and the trunk and its branches looked for the moment less like a tree and more like a great brown river, the Nile, the Amazon, the Benedetto and Flynn river of blood, and there at its isthmus was this one child, so that it seemed that all of these people, from Poland, from Italy, from Ireland and the Bronx and Brooklyn, had come together for no other reason than to someday produce Robert Benedetto, in an event as meant, as important as that one in Bethlehem that he had learned about in catechism class at St. Stannie's. — Anna Quindlen

If I could just get to Poland everything would be okay. — Jim Rohn

If Prague and the rest of Bohemia, with all their charming hospodas delightful architecture and pretty landscape should become too cosy for you, Ostrava, the Czech Republic's third largest city with about 330,000 inhabitants, will rapidly cure your spleen. Tucked away in the country's northeastern corner on the border between Moravia, Silesia and Poland, the former Czechoslovakia's "heart of steel" offers the true flair of the Wild East. As an Australian probably would have put it, this is a city where men are men, and sheep are nervous. — Terje B. Englund

The thing about World War II is that everyone knows about the concentration camps in Europe - in Nazi Germany and Poland and Auschwitz and the other camps - but, no one really talks about the camps that were here in the United States. — Lea Salonga

The common Calvinist experience of life as a refugee, or of being part of a host community that received refugees, led to lasting international connections between individuals and communities...As churches became established in Switzerland, the Palatinate, Scotland, England and Bearn, and the churches in the Netherlands, France, Hungary and Poland battled for legal recognition and survival, princely courts, noble houses, universities and colleges also became locations for interactions between many Calvinists. Theologians, clergy, students, booksellers, merchants, diplomats, courtiers and military officers became involved in networks of personal contacts, correspondence, teaching and negotiation. — Graeme Murdock

Poland, after the First World War, was beset by chaos, disorder, and a foolish incursion by the Red Army, which helped to produce the ultra-nationalist military dictatorship of General Pilsudski. — Tariq Ali

So I think that I can say, as the President of Poland, we're proud that I am coming from Poland, which is different and what's more important, much better than before. — Aleksander Kwasniewski

So in the tradition of Poland Spring, Evian, and other hydro-geniuses, we've decided to bottle something that was freely available and charge you money for it. — Steven D. Levitt

To those who are incapable of presenting the historic truth in an honest way, I want to say that Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of World War Two. — Ewa Kopacz

I will not speak to Vladimir Putin personally until we've rebuilt the 6th Fleet a little bit right under his nose; rebuilt the missile defense program in Poland right under his nose; and conducted a few military exercises in the Baltic states. — Carly Fiorina

You've got some very powerful countries: Poland, the United Kingdom, Sweden and others who have a genuine desire to see the euro zone straighten itself out. It's good for all of us, whether you're in the euro zone or not, to make sure that it doesn't lead to a fracturing. — Nick Clegg

I was named after my Jewish grandfather who left Poland early in the 20th century. What I knew from an early age was that he had lived most of his life in England, his Jewish wife had died, and he married a non-Jewish woman who was my grandmother. — Morris Gleitzman

My all-time favorite skin cream is from Poland. Its called Eva Natura with Polish herbs, including rosemary. It smells wonderful and is soothing and comforting. — Dagmara Dominczyk

If prayers worked, Hitler would have been stopped at the border of Poland by angels with swords of fire. — Nancy Willard

When people are coming to Krakow and we show them how and where we practice, they are like, 'Seriously? Are you kidding me?' But we're always saying that what matters about the courts - the lines, the nets - are the same. I'm practicing in Poland even when I don't have good facilities. — Agnieszka Radwanska

Poland! Poland! The very name carries with it sighings and groanings, nation-murder, brilliance, beauty, patriotism, splendors, self-sacrifice through generations of gallant men and exquisite women; indomitable endurance of bands of noble people carrying through world-wide exile the sacred fire of wrath against the oppressor, and uttering in every clime a cry of appeal to Humanity to rescue Poland. — Henryk Sienkiewicz

the Baltic states (Poland, Belarus, and the Ukraine), — Fred Siegel

I've never lived in Eastern Europe, although both my wife and I have ancestors in Poland and Russia - but I can see the scenes I create. — Alan Furst

Life is good, after all ... and that's what stays with me, even now, even when I'm about to be packed off to Poland. — Etty Hillesum

I've tried every kind of bottled water, but Poland Spring is my go-to. I always have room-temperature bottles of it on side of stage for post-performance. — French Montana

It was in Poland that the Einsatzgruppen were to fulfill their mission as "ideological soldiers" by eliminating the educated classes of a defeated enemy. (They were in some sense killing their peers: fifteen of the twenty-five Einsatzgruppe and Einsatzkommando commanders had doctorates.) — Timothy Snyder

Helen opened her eyes and gazed into the luminous blue of the sky. Was it crazy, she wondered, to be as grateful as she felt now, for moments like this, in a world that had atomic bombs in it - and concentration camps, and gas chambers? People were still tearing each other into pieces. There was still murder, starvation, unrest, in Poland, Palestine, India - God knew where else. Britain itself was sliding into bankruptcy and decay. Was it a kind of idiocy or selfishness, to want to be able to give yourself over to the trifles: to the parp of the Regent's Park Band; to the sun on your face, the prickle of grass beneath your heels, the movement of cloudy beer in your veins, the secret closeness of your lover? Or were those trifles all you had? Oughtn't you, precisely, to preserve them? To make little crystal drops of them, that you could keep, like charms on a bracelet, to tell against danger when next it came? — Sarah Waters

Why should this war in the West be fought for the restoration of Poland? The Poland of the Versailles Treaty will never rise again. — Adolf Hitler

I search on my drum for the land of the Poles and drum: lost, not yet lost, lost once more, lost to whom, lost too soon, lost by now, Poland's lost, all is lost, Poland is not yet lost. — Gunter Grass

If my father hadn't come to America about 35 years ago, I'd be starving in Poland . . . I'd be sobbing in France . . . I'd be stealing in Greece . . . I'd be shivering in Belgrade . . . I'd be slaving in Frankfurt . . . I'd be hiding in Prague . . . I'd be buried in Russia. But here he was, alive and walking on his own two feet. — Ann Howard Creel

Poland should be strong and prosperous and independent and play its proper role as a great nation in the heart of Europe. — George H. W. Bush

I placed no trust in faiths, doctrines, ideologies, institutions. Thus I could stand only upon my own feet. But I was a Pole, molded by Polishness, living in Poland. And so I needed to look deeper for my 'self,' in the place where it was no longer Polish but simply human — Witold Gombrowicz

In Poland, some people think that I'm kind of scandalous because I'm a woman who should stay at home with her kids instead of making movies about what I want and, even worse, addressing Polish taboos like church, homosexuals and history. — Malgorzata Szumowska

I still have five years to the end of my term. There are many candidates. There'll be a problem if it's supposed to be a European or someone from the emerging countries, the so-called BRICS. This will be decided, but please don't think Poland has anything to say about it. — Marek Belka

In the Catskills, nostalgia runs backwards. The upwardly mobile Jewish masses of the 1950s and 1960s have been replaced by the Jews of 19th century Poland. — Kevin Haworth

I have invested in four social networks. More than any other. But that's in Russia and Poland. — Yuri Milner

Let's allow Poland and the Czech Republic to have that missile shield that they were entitled to by joining NATO. I think that's the right strategic response to Russian aggression. — Mike Pence

The anti-globalization movement is one of the biggest globalized events of the contemporary world, people coming from everywhere, -Australia, Indonesia, Britain, India, Poland, Germany, South Africa-to demonstrate in Seattle or Quebec. What could be more global than that? — Amartya Sen

For sure, all over Poland, kids had my picture of a lemur on their bedroom wall - but the chances are they may never get to see a real lemur in Madagascar. I thought this was great and it really meant a lot to me. — Nigel Dennis

Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? — Terry Pratchett

If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland called Holes? — Steven Wright

President Lech Kaczynski is not at all active in Poland and his image abroad leaves a lot to be desired. — Lech Walesa

History does not end; it runs in cycles. The failure to defend Ukraine today is the failure of the Allies to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938. The world must act now so that Poland in 2015 will not be called on to play the role of Poland in 1939. — Garry Kasparov

The Soviet Union suffered 65 percent of all Allied military deaths, China 23 percent, Yugoslavia 3 percent, the United States and Britain 2 percent each, France and Poland 1 percent each. About 8 percent of all Germans died, compared with 2 percent of Chinese, 3.44 percent of Dutch people, 6.67 percent of Yugoslavs, 4 percent of Greeks, 1.35 percent of French, 3.78 percent of Japanese, 0.94 percent of British and 0.32 percent of Americans. Within the armed forces, 30.9 percent of Germans conscripted into the Wehrmacht died, — Max Hastings

When asked how he had had such an impact as a great sage and leader in the twentieth-century Jewish world, the Chafetz Chaim answered, "I set out to try to change the world, but I failed. So I decided to scale back my efforts and only try to influence the Jewish community of Poland, but I failed there, too. So I targeted the community in my hometown of Radin, but achieved no greater success. Then I gave all my effort to changing my own family, and failed at that as well. Finally, I decided to change myself, and that's how I had such an impact on the Jewish world. — Alan Morinis

Poland is an ally of the United States of America. It was our duty to show that we are a reliable, loyal, and predictable ally. America needed our help, and we had to give it. — Adam Michnik

My most ardent desire is that my country will recapture its historic opportunity for a peaceful evolution and that Poland will prove to the world that even the most complex situations can be solved by a dialogue and not by force. — Lech Walesa

When I wrapped 'Falling Skies,' I took a trip to the Caribbean to visit my grandma, which is great. I was out there for two weeks in Grenada. Then after that, I went to Poland for two and a half weeks to go watch some of the European soccer championships. — Brandon Jay McLaren

As the Russians press on the Poles from the east, the Germans won't have an appetite for a third war with Russia. The United States, however, will back Poland, providing it with massive economic and technical support. — George Friedman

Religious liberty in a nation is as real as the liberty of its least popular religious minority. Look not to the size of cathedrals or even to the words on the statute books for proof of the reality of religious freedom. Ask what is the fate of the Protestant in Spain, the Jew in Saudi Arabia, the Arab in Israel, the Catholic in Poland or the atheist in the United States. — Paul Blanshard

Peace is a precious and a desirable thing. Our generation, bloodied in wars, certainly deserves peace. But peace, like almost all things of this world, has its price, a high but a measurable one. We in Poland do not know the concept of peace at any price. There is only one thing in the lives of men, nations and countries that is without price. That thing is honor. — Jozef Beck

In Russia, they say I'm a Pole, in Poland they call me Russian. — Konstantin Rokossovsky

To get to Earth from the edge of the solar system, depending on the time of year and the position of the planets, you need to pass through at least Poland, Prussia, and Turkey, and you'd probably get stamps in your passport from a few of the other great powers. Then as you get closer to the world, you arrive at a point, in the continually shifting carriage space over the countries, where this complexity has to give way or fail. And so you arrive in the blissful lubrication of neutral orbital territory. — Paul Cornell

And I used to go the punk clubs such as a gay club in Poland Street that everyone would go to because it was the only place you could go to looking like that without getting beaten senseless. — Gary Numan

Poland nil, England nil, though England are now looking the better value for their nil. — Barry Davies

You're being nicer to me than I've been to you lately," I said.
"Yes, I am. But then, Hitler was nicer to Poland than you've been to me lately. — Molly Ringle

Marie Curie is my hero. Few people have accomplished something so rare - changing science. And as hard as that is, she had to do it against the tide of the culture at the time - the prejudice against her as a foreigner, because she was born in Poland and worked in France. And the prejudice against her as a woman. — Alan Alda

Then the train resumed its journey, leaving in its wake, in a snowy field in Poland, hundreds of naked orphans without a tomb. — Elie Wiesel

In Poland, my audience is all women between 18 and 30. At U.S. conventions, you have the fantasy and science fiction crowd. At Harvard you have an entirely different audience. It's so schizophrenic. — Jonathan Carroll

And in the last sentence I would like also to mention that Poland is one of the countries with which the United States has run strategic dialogues since last year. — Marek Belka

There were three causes that accounted for the proclamation of martial law in Poland. First it was the progressing economic ruin of the country. Second, it was the decomposition of the functioning of the state. And third, a threat of a civil war. — Wojciech Jaruzelski

What would have happened if Poland, rather than the Soviet Union, had accepted Joachim von Ribbentrop's proposals in 1939? Would the Soviet Union have withstood an invasion of Germany allied with Poland and, perhaps, Romania and Hungary as well? That Germany and Poland did not make an alliance, and that Germany and the Soviet Union did, is perhaps the single crucial fact about the war. — Timothy Snyder

Poland is one of the few countries that can afford to conduct a conventional monetary policy and that means we have to act against the buildup of imbalances in the economy. — Marek Belka

Jews were emphatically second-class subjects of the Tsar. A Pale of Settlement, outside which Jews were not supposed to reside, had been established by Catherine II in 1791, though it was not precisely delineated until 1835. It consisted of Russian-controlled Poland — Niall Ferguson

If you look at the Oscars and look at the Best Foreign Language series, you see that the films are coming from everywhere - from Quebec, Israel, Poland, and Belgium. It's not the usual French, German, etc. This category is opening up to socially engaged and political films. I think we're going to see a cross over to the main categories also. It's part of this global environment now and I'm grateful that the Academy is having this window on world cinema. — Philippe Falardeau

The Soviet Union had achieved an unusual boon through the pact. The Eastern part of Europe, from the Baltic to the Black Sea was declared as their sphere of influence. They spelled out by name the three Baltic republics: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - all three formerly, under the tsars, Russian territory. The two signatories included as part of the Soviet sphere of influence Bessarabia. Northern Bukovina had not been included in that sinister deal, yet Russia made its own decision to annex it, together with Bessarabia. They made it a kind of connecting bridge to Southern Poland. — Pearl Fichman

Roosevelt was determined to stop Stalin from taking over Eastern Europe. He thought they finally had an agreement on Poland. Before Roosevelt died, he realized that Stalin had broken his agreement. — W. Averell Harriman

I went to Poland for the Warsaw Film Festival, and it was quite an intense experience. I didn't think it would be, but it did feel quite emotional to go back to this place I'd heard so much about. — Lenny Abrahamson

He used to say that sinning was not about the bad things you'd done and regretted but about the failure to do what you should have done. Especially for others.' She — Marguerite Poland

No invader has ever conquered the heart of Poland, that spirit which is the inheritance of sons and daughters, the private passion of families and the ancient, unbreakable tie to all those who came before. — James A. Michener

The official ideology [of Poland] is Marxism-Leninism, which no one openly admits to believing. For Marx expressed the German view, and Lenin the Russian one, and the meeting of these particular minds has always spelled Polish ruin. — Norman Davies

The people in Poland had to deal with painful reforms. — Lech Walesa

After visits to several Communist countries (USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, East Germany, Vietnam, China, Cuba), I feel strongly that most "revolutionary" types around the world don't realize the importance of freedom of the press and the air, a right to peaceably assemble and discuss anything, including the dangers of such discussions. — Pete Seeger

It is one of the many graveyards which are the Great War's chief heritage. The chronicle of its battles provides the dreariest literature in military history; no brave trumpets sound in memory for the drab millions who plodded to death on the featureless plains of Picardy and Poland; no litanies are sung for the leaders who coaxed them to slaughter. — John Keegan

the Entente Powers, far from aiding Poland, regarded her activities with irritation. Poland won her independence for twenty years by her own efforts under the leadership of Pilsudski. — Norman Davies

More than any of the other new states that came into being at war's end, Poland changed the balance of power in eastern Europe. It was not large enough to be a great power, but it was large enough to be a problem for any great power with plans of expansion. It separated Russia from Germany, for the first time in more than a century. Poland's very existence created a buffer to both Russian and German power, and was much resented in Moscow and Berlin. — Timothy Snyder

Poland is not a very large country, but it's also not a small country. — Donald Tusk

We speak of peace, yes, but whose peace? Poland's? Bulgaria's? The peace of the grave? — Margaret Thatcher

Ukraine will be reforming its energy sector because we want to integrate into Europe, ... We have conducted all the talks and reached an agreement with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Poland and Georgia. — Viktor Yushchenko

In the middle of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered some fourteen million people. The place where all of the victims died, the bloodlands, extends from central Poland to western Russia, through Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic States. — Timothy Snyder

Oddly enough, it's - most of the books written about the subject aren't very good because they just focus in on the more hateful movies that they did very early, early on when they were trying to, you know, get Germany into the war, whether it be anti-Semitic movies like "Jud Suss," or "The Eternal Jew," or movies made against the Polish to help, you know, create sympathy for them to invade Poland - you know, there'd be movies where there would be some German girl living in Poland who's raped by the Polish or something. — Quentin Tarantino

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

I wanted to tell him a story, but I didn't. It's a story about a Jew riding in a streetcar, in Germany during the Third Reich, reading Goebbels' paper, the Volkische Beobachter. A non-Jewish acquaintance sits down next to him and says, "Why do you read the Beobachter?" "Look," says the Jew, "I work in a factory all day. When I get home, my wife nags me, the children are sick, and there's no money for food. What should I do on my way home, read the Jewish newspaper? Pogrom in Romania' 'Jews Murdered in Poland.' 'New Laws against Jews.' No, sir, a half-hour a day, on the streetcar, I read the Beobachter. 'Jews the World Capitalists,' 'Jews Control Russia,' 'Jews Rule in England.' That's me they're talking about. A half-hour a day I'm somebody. Leave me alone, friend. — Milton Sanford Mayer

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

In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn't do something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do. That's what people do. And that should truly frighten us. — James Comey

My father emigrated from Lithuania to the United States at the age of 12. He received his higher education in New York City and graduated in 1914 from the New York University School of Dentistry. My mother came at the age of 14 from a part of Russia which, after the war, became Poland; she was only 19 when she was married to my father. — Gertrude B. Elion

Let the war-ravaged people speak
No more Hiroshimas
No more Warsaw Massacres

Oh martyred Lidice! Bleeding Poland!
Beautiful Dresden no one could save.
Nor art nor pity nor the Madonna's hovering angels.
Hearts broken at Stalingrad! Pearl Harbor!
The beaches of Normandy!

Oh my people of all nations.
Brothers and sisters of one human family,
all stricken by war
Cry your heart's anguish, my tears mingle with yours!
But cry out one mighty voice to leaders and statesmen:
NO MORE WAR! — Rebecca Shelley

My family is from Russia and Poland. We never had that thing with the German Jews. — Rhea Perlman

First, Poland has been again overrun by two of the great powers which held her in bondage for 150 years but were unable to quench the spirit of the Polish nation. The heroic defense of Warsaw shows that the soul of Poland is indestructible, and that she will rise again like a rock which may for a spell be submerged by a tidal wave but which remains a rock. — Winston Churchill

Papa Ubu: Yes, gentlemen, but however beautiful it may be, it can't compare with Poland. Because if there weren't any Poland, there wouldn't be any Poles! — Alfred Jarry

Unfortunately the niveau of political culture is not particularly high in Poland - a relic of the communist past. — Wladyslaw Bartoszewski

It's a secret. My previous best friend suspected, and now she's at the bottom of a well. (Not really. She's in Poland. I had nothing to do with it — Laini Taylor

My message to the Americans, to the American President, is that I am coming from Poland, which is in good shape; it is much different than ten years ago when last state visit from Poland was here in the United States. — Aleksander Kwasniewski

All is well," I said as soothingly as possible. "The Maginot Line is secured, the truce is agreed, and I have her promise not to invade Poland. — Jeff Lindsay

Hinde Esther Singer was born in Poland on March 31, 1881, the daughter of Bathsheva and Pinchos Mendel Singer. Bathsheva was an intellectual, but both Bathsheva's father and her husband disapproved of erudite women. — Clive Sinclair

Today, there are more people of Irish ancestry in the United States than in Ireland, more Jews than in Israel, more blacks than in most African countries. There are more people of Polish ancestry in Detroit than in most of the leading cities in Poland, and more than twice as many people of Italian ancestry in New York as in Venice. — Thomas Sowell

In 1936, when I was born in the small Silesian village of Waltersdorf in the county of Sprottau in the then-eastern part of Germany, now part of Poland, the fine structure of the cell was still an enigma. — Gunter Blobel

I remember clearly the afternoon that she stood at the corner beside the door of the tourist centre in Gdansk. — You Jin

I can tell you a graphic difference. In Prague, for example, big red posters were put up on which could be read that seven Czechs had been shot today. I said to myself: If I put up a poster for every seven Poles shot, the forests of Poland would not be sufficient to manufacture the paper for such posters. — Hans Frank

I feel Polish. More specifically, I feel like I'm from the tiny village in the Northeast of Poland where I have a house and where I love to spend time. But I don't work there. I cut wood. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

My name was originally John Collins, but I just didn't think it had the flair I needed. I found out the poet laureate of Poland was named Krasinski and so it seemed like a shoe-in for show business. — John Krasinski

In spite of the frightful pogroms which took place, first in Poland and then in unprecedented fashion in the Ukraine, and which cost the lives of thousands of Jews, the Jewish people considered the post-war period as a messianic era. Israel, during those years, 1919-1920, rejoiced in Eastern and Southern Europe, in Northern and Southern Africa, and above all in America. — Denis Fahey

Church comforts the lonely, those who've lost, those who grieve. It is a weekly ritual that never changes, never goes away. You can go to mass anywhere around the world -- Waseca, North Dakota, Poland, Ireland -- and the only difference would be the language. Church provides us something to cling to, the rope line tied from the barn to the house during a blizzard. No matter what swirls around you, you cannot become lost. — Rachael Hanel

There's no question that Stalin broke the agreements made at Yalta completely about elections that were supposed to be held immediately in Poland, and Eastern Europe was plunged into slavery as a consequence. — Mark Shields