Europe Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Among all the disputes and uncertainties of the ethnographers about the races of Europe, one fact stands out clearly – namely, that we can distinguish a race of northerly distribution and origin, characterized physically by fair color of hair and skin and eyes, by tall stature and dolichocephaly (i. e. long shape of head), and mentally by great independence of character, individual initiative, and tenacity of will. Many names have been used to denote this type,.... It is also called the Nordic type.

William McDougall

The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

In this moment of opportunity, a common danger is erasing old rivalries. America is working with Russia and China and India, in ways we have never before, to achieve peace and prosperity. In every region, free markets and free trade and free societies are proving their power to lift lives. Together with friends and allies from Europe to Asia, and Africa to Latin America, we will demonstrate that the forces of terror cannot stop the momentum of freedom.

Europe's old dynastic slaughterhouse (Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent yet left of wars and scaffolds everywhere).

The school was nothing but reminiscence — of an Italian hill town, a French abbey, an English academy, the different sources improbably but convincingly melded into a fantasy about the classic sites of Europe as imagined by exiles from cold peripheral lands, nostalgia about somebody else's past.

It seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe, and has least support in the church-going United States. I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal: it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life, in exchange for the next? The Christian attitude is reflected in the words Robert Bolt's play has Thomas More saying to the headsman: 'Friend, be not afraid of your office. You send me to God'. For the nonbeliever, on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life is to end his existence.

We shall never sheathe the sword which we have not lightly drawn until Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than all that she has sacrificed, until France is adequately secured against the menace of aggression, until the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation, and until the military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed.

Blacks were not enslaved because they were black, but because they were available at the time. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black slave was brought to the Western Hemisphere. Only late in history were human beings even capable of crossing an ocean to get millions of other human beings of a different race. In the thousands of years before that, not only did Europeans enslave other Europeans, Asians enslaved other Asians, Africans enslaved other Africans, and the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other native peoples of the Western Hemisphere.

The First World War had begun – imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age.

A. J. P. Taylor

If you live in Europe... things change... but continuity never seems to break. You don't have to throw the past away.

Nadine Gordimer

It has been an unrelenting, but, I have to accept, at least partly successful campaign to persuade Britain that Europe is a conspiracy aimed at us, rather than a partnership designed for us and others to pursue our national interest properly in a modern, interdependent world. It is right to confront this campaign head on. Provided that the treaty embodies the essential British positions, we shall agree to it as a Government. Once agreed – either at the June Council, which is our preference, or subsequently – Parliament should debate it in detail and decide upon it. Then, let the people have the final say.

Benito Mussolini had barely seized power in Italy before the Vatican made an official treaty with him.... Catholicism became the only recognized religion in Italy... and in return urged its followers to vote for Mussolini's party. Pope Pius XI described [Mussolini] as 'a man sent by providence.'... Across southern Europe, the church was a reliable ally in the instatement of fascist regimes....

Christopher Hitchens

Peter Sissons: The single currency, a United States of Europe, was all that in your mind when you took Britain in?
Edward Heath: Of course, yes.

In medieval Europe, monks grew vegetables, herbs, flowers, berries, and fruit trees together for mutual benefit. You should plan plant populations relative to the root level each species occupies in the soil relative to the feeding capacity of each species.

I should like to make an observation to right honourable and honourable Gentlemen opposite. It is that I do not think they will help to produce the atmosphere in Europe which is so desirable by issuing papers that have been issued by the National Council of Labour, headed 'Hit Hitler'.

Stanley Baldwin

Civilisation may perish as the result of war: it would certainly perish as the result of Nazi-ism triumphant beyond the borders of the country of its birth... And now we know that should the challenge come, we shall be there. In Luther's words we can no other. We were there when the Spanish galleons made for Plymouth: we were on those bloody fields in the Netherlands when Louis XIV aimed at the domination of Europe: we were on duty when Napoleon bestrode the world like a demi-god, and we answered the roll call, as you did, in August, 1914. We can no other. So help us, God.

Stanley Baldwin

We may add that the Poland of the fifteenth century was one of the most civilised states of Europe.

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

Throughout the 1950s the regime resorted to crude racism in its anti-American propaganda, often treating inset eyes, big noses, and other Caucasian features as the manifestation of villainy. To the consternation of the diplomatic community, little effort was made to enlighten people about the existence of friendly big-noses, even though—as this spring's Cold War International History Project bulletin makes clear—North Korea's cities were rebuilt and its people fed and cared for with enormous amounts of assistance from Eastern Europe.

Brian Reynolds Myers

They know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines. Being baffled, and also being very tired of being baffled, they have come to believe that there is no way out—except war—which would remove all the bewildering paradoxes of their tedious and now misguided attempts to construct peace. In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war—as they used to be. For they still believe that "winning" means something, although they never tell us what.

C. Wright Mills

What the German has done to the Jew in Europe, we are doing to the Jap in the Pacific.

Charles Lindbergh

From what I have said of the natives of New Holland, they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon earth; but in reality they are far happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them.

Lord Palmerston, with characteristic levity had once said that only three men in Europe had ever understood [the Schleswig-Holstein question], and of these the Prince Consort was dead, a Danish statesman (unnamed) was in an asylum, and he himself had forgotten it.

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

Those new regions [America] which we found and explored with the fleet... we may rightly call a New World... a continent more densely peopled and abounding in animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa; and, in addition, a climate milder than in any other region known to us.

Amerigo Vespucci

Germany will regard the Jewish question as solved only after the very last Jew has left the greater German living space... Europe will have its Jewish question solved only after the very last Jew has left the continent.

Alfred Rosenberg

[The English ruling classes are] Freemasons thoroughly infected by Juda. The British people must be liberated from the Antichrist Juda. We must drive Juda out of England just as he has been chased out of the Continent... Juda's plan has been smashed to pieces and they themselves swept out of the European Continent! [Europe is] consolidating and closing itself off from British influences after the elimination of the British and the Jews!