Europe Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Traders (like the Phoenicians) carried their methods as well as their wares to Europe by ship.

Cyrus H. Gordon

This was no doubt due in part to economic reasons, for Scotland before the era of modern industrial developments was a poor country and brains and brawn were among its few merchantable assets. Hence, on the one hand, the rewarding eminence attained by so many Scots beyond their own borders in the worlds of scholarship, commerce, and administration... and hence, on the other hand, the fame of the achievements of the Scots on the Continent as soldiers of fortune in the wars of Europe, a valorous reputation subsequently so well maintained by the Highland Regiments in the service of the British Crown.

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan

The race of prophets is extinct. Europe is becoming set in its ways, slowly embalming itself beneath the wrappings of its borders, its factories, its law-courts and its universities. The frozen Mind cracks between the mineral staves which close upon it. The fault lies with your mouldy systems, your logic of 2 + 2 = 4. The fault lies with you, Chancellors, caught in the net of syllogisms. You manufacture engineers, magistrates, doctors, who know nothing of the true mysteries of the body or the cosmic laws of existence. False scholars blind outside this world, philosophers who pretend to reconstruct the mind. The least act of spontaneous creation is a more complex and revealing world than any metaphysics.

The German Reunification and unification of Europe are two sides of the same coin.

There are only two coherent British attitudes to Europe. One is to participate fully... and to endeavour to exercise as much influence and gain as much benefit as possible from the inside. The other is to recognise that Britain's history, national psychology and political culture may be such that we can never be other than a foot-dragging and constantly complaining member; and that it would be better, and certainly would produce less friction, to accept this and to move towards an orderly, and if possible, reasonably amicable withdrawal.

Islam is the Trojan Horse in Europe. If we do not stop Islamification now, Eurabia and Netherabia will just be a matter of time. One century ago, there were approximately 50 Muslims in the Netherlands. Today, there are about 1 million Muslims in this country. Where will it end? We are heading for the end of European and Dutch civilisation as we know it.

It is very difficult to do one's duty. I was considered a barbarian because at the storming of the Praga 7,000 people were killed. Europe says that I am a monster. I myself have read this in the papers, but I would have liked to talk to people about this and ask them: is it not better to finish a war with the death of 7,000 people rather than to drag it on and kill 100,000.

Alexander Suvorov

It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.

Carlisle is right in saying that there is no serious danger to be apprehended from Ireland, but what I want to prevent is any, even the slightest, outbreak, and this is only to be done by showing that we have in Ireland a sufficient Saxon force to make any movement on the part of the Celts perfectly hopeless, and sure to bring immediate destruction on those who take part in it. Any outbreak of any kind in Ireland would be magnified by our enemies and rivals, and would greatly weaken our political position in Europe.

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

We are the envy of Europe and in a few years time we are going to be one of the top countries in the world.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

Some of the most popular discos in America and Europe were started as gay establishments, which began to open their doors to anyone who wanted to dance.

Jamake Highwater

Like a gigantic pump, the German Reich sucked in Europe's resources and working population.

Eugene M. Kulischer

A century after the death of Patrick... there were few Romans left in western Europe. [By the mid sixth century] the whole subtle substructure of Roman political organization and Roman communication has vanished. In its place have grown the sturdy little principalities of the Middle Ages, Gothic illiterates ruling over Gothic illiterates, pagan or occasionally Arian—that is, following a debased, simpleminded form of Christianity in which Jesus was given a status similar to that of Mohammed in Islam.

It is probably not an accident that modern science grew explosively in Christian Europe and left the rest of the world behind. A thousand years of theological disputes nurtured the habit of analytical thinking that could also be applied to the analysis of natural phenomena. On the other hand, the close historical relations between theology and science have caused conflicts between science and Christianity that does not exist between science and other religions.

I think one man is just as good as another so long as he's not a n*gger or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made a White man from dust, a n*gger from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, Yellow men in Asia and White men in Europe and America.

Harry S. Truman

Stony seaboard, far and foreign,
Stony hills poured over space,
Stony outcrop of the Burren,
Stones in every fertile place,
Little fields with boulders dotted,
Grey-stone shoulders saffron-spotted,
Stone-walled cabins thatched with reeds,
Where a Stone Age people breeds
The last of Europe's stone age race.

We can only imagine the violent convulsions that will wrack the continent if something on the scale of 9/11 ever happens on that side of the ocean. And it's more likely to happen over there in the short and medium term than it is over here. Europe is already under much greater attack than the United States, and it has a far larger problem with Islamic radicalization.

Hubert Ronson, as I was to discover later, is the sort of European you are always coming across in Africa. I never made up my mind whether such men leave Europe because their talents are unappreciated in the politer civilisations, or whether they develop them after they arrive. Bullies, thugs, warm-hearted layabouts, at heart they are all the same sentimental, anxious extroverts, with the same endless fund of dirty stories, and the same secret loathing and longing for the cultures they have escaped.

A fleet of British ships of war are the best negotiators in Europe.

In the '70s Prague was pewter gray in spirit, broken and oddly adrift in the middle of Europe. The most golden thing about it then was its silence. Loneliness was its chief allure, radiating a sullen romance bred of cigarette smoke and satire.

I need say hardly anything in favor of the Intellects of the Negroes, or of their capacities for virtue and happiness, although these have been supposed by some to be inferior to those of the inhabitants of Europe. The accounts which travelers give of their ingenuity, humanity and strong attachments to their parents, relations, friends and country, show us that they are equal to the Europeans... All the vices which are charged upon the Negroes in the southern colonies, and the West Indies, such as Idleness, Treachery, Theft and the like, are the genuine offspring of slavery, and serve as an argument to prove, that they were not intended, by Providence, for it.

He imprisons and tortures at Guantanamo. He imprisoned and tortured at Abu Ghraib. He has secret torture chambers in Europe. Yes, he imprisons even here in the United States, with his jails carrying more blacks than his universities can ever enroll. He even suspends the provisions of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Take Guantanamo for example; at that concentration camp international law does not apply. The national laws of the people there do not apply. Laws of the United States of America do not apply. Only Bush's law applies. Can the international community accept being lectured by this man on the provisions of the universal declaration of human rights? Definitely not!

Up to 1931 there was no reason to suppose that social changes would not, or could not, follow the same evolutionary pattern which had resulted from the increased creation and distribution of wealth during the nineteenth century. Now, after 1931, many of us felt that the disease was more deep-rooted. It had become evident that the structure of capitalist society in its old form had broken down, not only in Britain but all over Europe and even in the United States. The whole system had to be reassessed. Perhaps it could not survive at all; it certainly could not survive without radical change. Something like a revolutionary situation had developed, not only at home but overseas.

Harold Macmillan

Digital technology is doing more to shape our politics than anything since Gutenberg's introduction of the printing press helped Europe usher in the Protestant Reformation.

Walter Isaacson

Anyone who pretends to know if we are out of the woods yet is clearly kidding themselves or misleading their audience.... Things have stabilized in Europe and it's in their interest to be optimistic but the muddle-through is still on.

Mervyn King, Baron King of Lothbury