Europe

"Unless we act, events that we Europeans will be unable to influence will overtake us. I believe we Europeans feel far too safe. Europe’s political and economic leadership in the world, which was still unchallenged at the beginning of the century, has long since ceased to exist. Will the dominant cultural influence of Europe be maintained? I think not, unless we defend it and adjust ourselves to new conditions; history has shown that civilisations are all too perishable."

"European integration should not be rigid but as flexible as we can possibly make it. It should not be a straitjacket for the peoples of Europe but should be their common mainstay, a common support for the healthy, individual development of each of them."

"Did it have to come to this? The paradox is that when Europe was less united, it was in many ways more independent. The leaders who ruled in the early stages of integration had all been formed in a world before the global hegemony of the United States, when the major European states were themselves imperial powers, whose foreign policies were self-determined. These were people who had lived through the disasters of the Second World War, but were not crushed by them. This was true not just of a figure like De Gaulle, but of Adenauer and Mollet, of Eden and Heath, all of whom were quite prepared to ignore or defy America if their ambitions demanded it. Monnet, who did not accept their national assumptions, and never clashed with the US, still shared their sense of a future in which Europeans could settle their own affairs, in another fashion. Down into the 1970s, something of this spirit lived on even in Giscard and Schmidt, as Carter discovered. But with the neo-liberal turn of the 1980s, and the arrival in power in the 1990s of a postwar generation, it faded. The new economic doctrines cast doubt on the state as a political agent, and the new leaders had never known anything except the Pax Americana. The traditional springs of autonomy were gone."

"Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: it is a geographical expression."

"I have always found the word Europe on the lips of those politicians who wanted something from other Powers which they dared not demand in their own names."

"The global role of the United States is perhaps the ultimate chapter in that long period of European expansion which had begun in western Europe, and especially on the Atlantic seaboard, during the 15th century. Europe slowly had outgrown its homeland. Its cultural empire eventually formed a long band traversing most of the Northern Hemisphere and dipping far into the Southern. The modern hub of the peoples and ideas of European origin is now New York as much as Paris, or Los Angeles as much as London. In the history of the European peoples the city of Washington is perhaps what Constantinople - the infant city of Emperor Constantine - was to the last phase of the Roman Empire; for it is unlikely that Europeans, a century hence, will continue to stamp the world so decisively with their ideas and inventions."

"The USA will remain the only superpower. China is becoming an economic giant. Europe is being Islamicized."

"Russia's only real geostrategic option - the option that would give Russia a realistic international role and also maximize the opportunity of transforming and socially modernizing itself - is Europe."

"The key point to bear in mind is that Russia cannot be in Europe without Ukraine also being in Europe, whereas Ukraine can be in Europe without Russia being in Europe."

"My conclusion will be simple. It will consist of saying, in the very midst of the sound and the fury of our history: "Let us rejoice." Let us rejoice, indeed, at having witnessed the death of a lying and comfort-loving Europe and at being faced with cruel truths."

"Soon nostalgia will be another name for Europe."

"If we're leaving our fate to sociopathic buffoons, we're finished... Trump is the worst, that's because of US power which is overwhelming. We are talking about U.S. decline but you just look at the world, you don't see that when the U.S. imposes sanctions, murders, devastating sanctions, that's the only country that can do that, but everyone has to follow. Europe may not like, in fact hate actions on Iran, but they have to follow, they have to follow the master, or else they get kicked out of the international financial system. That's not a law of nature, it's a decision in Europe to be subordinate to the master in Washington. Other countries don't even have a choice...."

"One of the most ironic elements of today's virus crisis, is that Cuba is helping Europe. I mean this is so shocking, that you don't know how to describe it. That Germany can't help Greece, but Cuba can help the European countries. If you stop to think about what that means, all words fail, just as when you see thousands of people dying in the Mediterranean, fleeing from a region that has been devastated... and being sent to the deaths in the Mediterranean, you don't know what words to use."

"The Crisis, the civilizational crisis of the West at this point is devastating... it does bring up childhood memories of listening to Hitler raving on the radio to raucous crowds... it makes you wonder if this species is even viable."

"After Napoleon's 1815 defeat at Waterloo, Europeans had created nation-states in the image and likeness of Napoleon. The new states became the foci of popular affection, even worship. All organized themselves as Napoleon had France, and as Hegel had prescribed, with every house numbered so that bureaucratic government could pass its science to and collect sustenance from each. The states became the purveyors of education and sources of authority. They fostered the myth that people within their borders formed distinct races with different geniuses and destinies. All partook of Charles Darwin's ideology that life is an evolutionary struggle in which the fittest survive."

"African citizens are certainly better off in countries that support their aspirations and communities rather than becoming 3rd or 4th class citizens in Europe... When did Europe ever operate on behalf of African people except when Africa or its people were used to benefit the goals and priorities of Europe?"

"Many of the traits on which modern Europe prides itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology, etiquette, fashion, various types of medicine, hospitals, all came from this great city of cities. (...) The surprise is the extent to which Islam has been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the Balkans, and the extent to which it has contributed so much towards the civilisation which we all too often think of, wrongly, as entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and our present, in all fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart."

"It was the fate of Europe to be always a battleground. Differences in race, in religion, in political genius and social ideals, seemed always... to be invitations to contest by battle."

"In its immense variety the European landscape defies easy definition. In no equivalent area of the earth’s surface is it possible to find so many different ecozones so closely packed together; it is a variety rich in opportunity, encouraging human communities to venture and adapt, and by so doing to develop a flexibility conducive to survival."

"For more than five hundred years the cardinal problem in defining Europe has centred on the inclusion or exclusion of Russia."

"Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the fate of the world."

"We are inclined to overemphasize the material influences in history. The Russians especially make this mistake. Intellectual values and ethnic influences, tradition and emotional factors are equally important. If this were not the case, Europe would today be a federated state, not a madhouse of nationalism."

"As to the territorial limits of Europe, they may seem relatively clear on its seaward flanks, but many island groups far to the north and west—Svalbard, the Faroes, Iceland, and the Madeira and Canary islands—are considered European, while Greenland (though tied politically to Denmark) is conventionally allocated to North America. Furthermore, the Mediterranean coastlands of North Africa and southwestern Asia also exhibit some European physical and cultural affinities. Turkey and Cyprus in particular, while geologically Asian, possess elements of European culture and may be regarded as parts of Europe."

"Although 50 years of European peace since the end of World War II may augur well for the future, it must be remembered that there were also more than 50 year of peace between the Congress of Vienna and the Franco-Prussian War. Moreover, contrary to the hopes and assumptions of Jean Monnet and other advocates of European integration, the devastating American Civil War shows that a formal political union is no guarantee against an intra-European war."

"Like the Roman Empire in the early fifth century, Europe has allowed its defenses to crumble. As its wealth has grown, so its military prowess has shrunk, along with its self-belief. It has grown decadent in its shopping malls and sports stadiums. At the same time, it has opened its gates to outsiders who have coveted its wealth without renouncing their ancestral faith."

"Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels."

"Europe dominated the world, but it failed to dominate itself. For five hundred years Europe tore itself apart in civil wars."

"Contemporary Europe is a search for an exit from hell... Europe has always been a bloody place."

"No continent is as small and fragmented as Europe. Only Australia is smaller, yet Europe consists of fifty independent nations (including Turkey and the Caucasus, for reasons explained later). Crowded with nations, it is also crowded with people. Europe's population density is 72.5 people per square kilometer. The European Union's density is 112 people per square kilometer. Asia has 86 people per square kilometer. Europe is crowded and fragmented."

"Oui, c'est l'Europe, depuis l'Atlantique jusqu'à l'Oural, c'est l'Europe, c'est toute l'Europe, qui décidera du destin du monde!"

"The peoples of Europe are a work in progress and always must be... The history of the people of Europe has not ended -- it never will. Ethnogenesis is a process of the present and future as much as it is the past. No efforts of romantics, politicians, or social scientists can preserve once and for all some essential soul of a people or nation. Nor can any effort ensure that nations, ethnic groups, and communities of today will not vanish utterly in the future. The past may have set the parameters within which one can build the future, but it cannot determine what that future must be."

"Europe is not really even a geographic entity; it is separated from Asia only at one point, the Bosphorus, by a small stretch of water. North of that there is continuity over the russians steppes, a complete terrestrial flow. I suggest that is also true of culture, and indeed of social organization. Indeed Europe has never been purely isolated, purely Christian. Instead of Christian Europe, one has to see the continent as penetrated by the three world religions that originated in the Near East and which indeed had a common mythology or sacred text; in order of arrival these were Judaism, Christianity and Islam. (...) All have equal entitlements to be present, and in this general ('objective') sense none can be considered only as the Other; they are part of Europe, part of our heritage."

"It is time to consign to oblivion the cold war postulates when Europe was viewed as an arena of confrontation divided into "spheres of influence" and someone else's "forward-based defences", as an object of military confrontation — namely a theatre of war."

"Now it is up to all of us, all the participants in the European process, to make the best possible use of the groundwork laid down through our common efforts. Our idea of a common European home serves the same purpose too. It was born out of our realization of new realities, of our realization of the fact that the linear continuation of the path, along which inter-European relations have developed until the last quarter of the twentieth century, is no longer consonant with these realities. The idea is linked with our domestic economic and political perestroika which called for new relations above all in that part of the world to which we, the Soviet Union, belong, and with which we have been tied most closely over the centuries."

"As far as the economic content of the common European home is concerned, we regard as a realistic prospect — though not a close one — the emergence of a vast economic space from the Atlantic to the Urals where Eastern and Western parts would be strongly interlocked. In this sense, the Soviet Union’s transition to a more open economy is essential; and not only for ourselves, for a higher economic effectiveness and for meeting consumer demands. Such a transition will increase East-West economic interdependence and, thus, will tell favorably on the entire spectrum of European relations."

"A German-Russian partnership is a key element in any serious pan-European integration process. It is my ardent wish that Russia and Germany may manage to preserve all the positive achievements of the late 1980s and early 1990s in today's difficult times."

"We have seen the Capitols and most of the principle towns and people, of every Country in Europe. I have not yet seen any to be jealous of."

"Europe has not been a continent of immigrants... It lacks the ingredients necessary to assimilate, integrate, and intermarry large numbers of newcomers each year: There is no dynamic and fluid economy, no confidence in its own values, no belief that class and race are incidental, not essential, to one's persona, no courage to assume that an immigrant made a choice to leave a worse place for a better one. And all this is in the context of a class-bound hierarchy..."

"The expansion of Europe was the transforming force in human history of the last 500 years, and yet the modern academy looks for reasons not to study it. In the era of decolonisation the new nations want to stress their indigenous roots and sympathetic scholars explain that European influence was not overwhelming, but that it was used and subverted by locals for local purposes. To concentrate on Europe is criticised as 'Eurocentric'. But to ignore Europe makes the history of any part of the globe unintelligible."

"European civilisation is unique because it is the only civilisation which has imposed itself on the rest of the world. It did this by conquest and settlement; by its economic power; by the power of its ideas; and because it had things that everyone else wanted. Today every country on earth uses the discoveries of science and the technologies that flow from it, and science was a European invention."

"Europe has at present only two states which can be regarded as standing firm in the face of Bolshevism: Germany and Italy. The other countries are either disintegrated through their democratic form of life, infected by Marxism, and thus likely themselves to collapse in the foreseeable future, or ruled by authoritarian governments whose sole strength lies in their military means of power; this means, however, that, being obliged to secure the existence of their leadership in face of their own peoples by means of the armed hand of the executive, they are unable to direct this armed hand outward for the preservation of their states. All these countries would be incapable of ever conducting a war against Soviet Russia with any prospects of success. In any case, apart from Germany and Italy, only Japan can be regarded as a power standing firm in the face of the world peril."

"Western European humanity moves by will and reason. A Russian person lives first of all with his heart and imagination, and only then with his will and mind. Therefore, the average European is ashamed of sincerity, conscience and kindness [regarding it] as "stupidity"; A Russian person, on the contrary, expects from a person, first of all, kindness, conscience and sincerity. Original: Западноевропейское человечество движется волею и рассудком. Русский человек живет прежде всего сердцем и воображением и лишь потом волею и умом. Поэтому средний европеец стыдится искренности, совести и доброты как «глупости»; русский человек, наоборот, ждет от человека прежде всего доброты, совести и искренности."

"Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people."

"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there."

"The reality is that, since the fall of Rome, no power has come near to ruling this continent. Charlemagne did not do so, nor did the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors, nor France's Napoleon, nor Germany's Hitler, nor yet the commissioners of the European Union. If history teaches anything, it is that all attempts to straighten Kant's 'crooked timber of humanity' will fail. Europe's peoples will not be put in bondage to a superior state, however liberal its intentions."

"[Y]ou don’t have to talk about Nazis or Hitler or any of that to say the norm in Europe is competition, conflict. And if we think that that’s over, I think that history tells us otherwise."

"In Europe, there exist no borders. The people I spoke to all agreed that their quality of life was enhanced in many ways after unification of the continent. We saw the amazing synergy effects of European union."

"Europe’s political stability, social cohesion, economic prosperity and security are more threatened today than at any point since the Cold War, Russia is destabilizing the Continent on every front. Indigenous factors – whether long-extant nationalism, design flaws in the Eurozone lack of a common foreign policy, or incapability at assimilating immigrants – certainly lie at the root of these crises."

"In recent decades, Europe has retreated to the conduct of soft power. But besieged as it is on almost all frontiers by upheavals and migration, Europe, including Britain, can avoid turning into a victim of circumstance only by assuming a more active role."

"For 400 years, world history was made by Europeans. Many of the great ideas by which we live — constitutional government, freedom of the individual, the ideas of the Enlightenment — originated in Europe and were spread by Europe around the world. Now this region, which was dynamic and built the world, has become too preoccupied with itself. It confines itself basically to the exercise of soft power. At present, no European government has the capacity to ask its people for sacrifices on behalf of foreign policy. Unless Europe can recover some of its historic dynamism, there will be a big hole in the world system as it has until now manifested itself."

"One should not be surprised to see the Catholic South at the beginning of the nineteenth century being already surpassed by the industrious North in matters of material welfare. Spain, Portugal, and Italy were considered by Northerners to be countries of mere archeological interest full of loafing monks, romantic ruins, and lovers playing the guitar. For the tourists coming from England, Holland, or the Baltic countries, the Mediterranean parts of Europe were nothing else but large agglomerations of illiterate beggars, bravos, and unshaven toreros. The other Catholic countries were considered to be tainted similarly by the stigma of inferiority; Austria-Hungary, which enjoyed Gladstone's special wrath, figured as a deplorable survival from the Middle Ages and France was only respected in so far as she harbored atheistic elements. The fate of Poland, the decay of the clergy in Hungary and Mexico, the drunkenness of the Irish and the pronunciamentos in South America — they all served to complete the picture of a rotten and "backward" Catholicism. Belfast prospered while Dublin was just dear, dirty Dublin. It was pointed out that the French Protestants — hardly a million people — possessed a full eighth of the French national wealth."

"Even if Europe's decline is now irreversible, there is no reason that it should become a collapse. There is, however, a precondition: facing realities at long last, something that has been postponed in many parts of Europe to this day. The debate should be about which of Europe's traditions and values can still be saved, not about Europe as a shining example for all mankind, the moral superpower of the twenty-first century."

"There is no place for concern that it would change the structure and operation of the EU in a radical way. 90% of the constitution agreement is already in the current agreements. The innovations in the draft will clarify the structure of the EU and make its activity more efficient, as well as strengthen citizens’ rights."

"Asia is most unlike Europe. The Europeans are of three major ethnic groups -- the Slavs in the East, the Germanic race in the North and the Latin in the South. All these races are very acquisitive, especially of the territories of their neighbours. As a result over the past two millennium there has not been a year when there was not a war between their states. In the process they got rather mixed and developed more or less along the same line culturally and economically. Since they are prone to fighting, they developed great skills in devising and producing ever more efficient killing instruments. This skill spilled over into other commercial activities so that they became industrialised very early."

"So there is no single European people. There is no single all-embracing community of culture and tradition among, say, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Berlin and Belgrade. In fact, there are at least four communities: the Northern Protestant, the Latin Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, and the Muslim Ottoman. There is no single language - there are more than twenty. (...) There are no real European political parties (...). And most significantly of all: unlike the United States, Europe still does not have a common story."

"I'm worried about moving in the direction of Western Europe, because I believe that the higher taxes in Western Europe are one of the reasons that those economies aren't as rich as we are and why people don't work as much in Western Europe as they do in the United States."

"What has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not as the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable; and although at every period those who travelled in different paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other's development have rarely had any permanent success, and each has in time endured to receive the good which the others have offered. Europe is, in my judgment, wholly indebted to this plurality of paths for its progressive and many-sided development."

"[I]n Europe, faced with the choice between human rights and gas, many politicians pick gas."

"The whole world ought to be opposed to Europe for its cruel history, Jack, and yet in favor of it because after about a thousand years it may have learned some sense."

"Manifestly, in August 1914 the status quo of western Europe was about to vanish. Either the liberal democracies would engage in a terrible episode of bloodletting in order to preserve their independence, territorial integrity and great power status, or they would avoid bloodshed by permitting the autocracy and militarism of the kaiser’s Germany to overwhelm them. That is, the alternative to the horrors of this war was not the continuation of the existing order. It was western Europe's abandonment of some of its finest achievements. These achievements derive from its struggles against absolute church and absolute monarchy, and from its endorsement of the principles of the enlightenment: elected governments, freedom of speech and of conscience, respect for the rights of minorities, and at least partial acknowledgment of the notion that all people are created equal and possess the same entitlements to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

"Europe has produced certain ideas and institutions, has been able, on and off, and with varying degrees of means, to blend them, purify them, make them work effectively, and has been able also to spread them around the world."

"After hearing Unamuno's long enconium on St. Ignatius, the great Captain of the Basques, Baroja would shrug his shoulders and grunt his dissent as follows: "Great states, great captains, great kings, great gods leave me cold. They are for the people who dwell in plains watered by rich rivers, for Egyptians, Chinese, Germans, and French. We Europeans of the Pyrenees and Alps love small states, small rivers and small gods whom we may address familiarly.""

"What is Europe really but a sterile trunk which owes everything to oriental grafts?"

"Europe owes its greatness to the fact that the primary loyalties of the European people have been detached from religion and re-attached to the land. Those who believe that the division of Europe into nations has been the primary cause of European wars should remember the devastating wars of religion that national loyalties finally brought to an end. And they should study our art and literature for its inner meaning. In almost every case, they will discover, it is an art and literature not of war but of peace, an invocation of home and the routines of home, of gentleness, everydayness and enduring settlement... The idea that the citizen owes loyalty to a country, a territory, a jurisdiction and all those who reside within it — the root assumption of democratic politics, and one that depends upon the nation as its moral foundation - that idea has no place in the minds and hearts of many who now call themselves citizens of European states."

"There are only two kinds of states in Europe: small states, and small states that have not yet realised they are small."

"The odd thing about modern Europe is that, if you look at the borders, you might think that Germany had won the First World War... The European Union and the old Soviet states are associated with a Europe that feels as if it is run from Berlin. From Scandinavia to Turkey, lorries trundle back and forth with German industrial goods; the euro is mainly German, the Deutsche Bank dominates the eurozone."

"Europeans believe that people from other cultures are threatening their national identities and livelihoods... Europe is rediscovering nationalism... Europeans have long defined themselves by a strong sentiment of national belonging, often linked to language, ethnicity and religion, and distrust of foreigners. The love for the place you were born, the trust of the people who surround you, and the fear of what strangers could do to you and your community is a basic human feeling. But in Europe, nationalism is particularly notable for the sheer scale of death and destruction it historically has brought."

"But there is no point in indulging in wishful thinking about the past. The changes were brought about by the World War and its repercussions. The war tore Europe from its previous position and transformed it into a continent bleeding from many wounds and left impoverished – not only in Germany – valuable segments of the population. “Where iron grows in the mountain shafts, the masters of the Earth arise." Europe is no longer the main source of the world’s raw materials, and we can no longer delude ourselves that Europe is the leader of the world. For this reason the peoples of Europe are drawing closer together to protect themselves against conquest and inundation. And inasmuch as economics has an effect on politics, this drawing together, even though it might be questionable from the standpoint of economics, does constitute progress toward international understanding and peace. Even though the psychology of this process, which involves billions, causes sociologists to have reason for misgiving, the process is still an asset to mutual understanding among the nations."

"In the heart of Europe runs the purest stream of human love, of justice, of spirit of self-sacrifice for higher ideals. The Christian culture of centuries has sunk deep in her life's core. In Europe we have seen noble minds who have ever stood up for the rights of man irrespective of colour and creed."

"Static inequality is a snapshot view of inequality; it does not reflect what will happen to you in the course of your life. Consider that about 10 percent of Americans will spend at least a year in the top 1 percent, and more than half of all Americans will spent a year in the top 10 percent. This is visibly not the same for the more static—but nominally more equal—Europe. For instance, only 10 percent of the wealthiest five hundred American people or dynasties were so thirty years ago; more than 60 percent on the French list are heirs and a third of the richest Europeans were the richest centuries ago. In Florence, it was just revealed that things are even worse: the same handful of families have kept the wealth for five centuries."

"From these shores, it may seem to some of you that by comparison with the risk and sacrifice which America has borne through four decades and the courage with which you have shouldered unwanted burdens, Europe has not fully matched your expectations. Bear with me if I dwell for a moment on the Europe to which we now belong. It is not the Europe of ancient Rome, of Charlemagne, of Bismarck. We who are alive today have passed through perhaps the greatest transformation of human affairs on the Continent of Europe since the fall of Rome. In but a short chapter of its long history, Europe lost the position which it had occupied for two thousand years -- and it is your history as much as ours. For five centuries, that small continent had extended its authority over islands and continents the world over. For the first forty years of this century, there were seven great powers: United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, Italy. Of those seven, two now tower over the rest -- United States and the Soviet Union. To that swift and historic change Europe -- a Europe of many different histories and many different nations -- has had to find a response. It has not been an easy passage to blend this conflux of nationalism, patriotism, sovereignty, into a European Community, yet I think that our children and grandchildren may see this period -- these birth pangs of a new Europe -- more clearly than we do now. They will see it as a visionary chapter in the creation of a Europe able to share the load alongside you. Do not doubt the firmness of our resolve in this march towards this goal, but do not underestimate what we already do. Today, out of the forces of the Alliance in Europe, 95%; of the divisions, 85%; of the tanks, 80%; of the combat aircraft, and 70%; of the fighting ships are provided, manned and paid for by the European Allies and Europe has more than three million men under arms and more still in reserve. We have to. We are right in the front line. The frontier of freedom cuts across our continent. Members of Congress, the defense of that frontier is as vital to you as it is to us."

"What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy."

"'Europe' in anything other than the geographical sense is a wholly artificial construct. It makes no sense at all to lump together Beethoven and Debussy, Voltaire and Burke, Vermeer and Picasso, Notre Dame and St Paul's, boiled beef and bouillabaisse, and portray them as elements of a 'European' musical, philosophical, artistic, architectural or gastronomic reality. If Europe charms us, as it has so often charmed me, it is precisely because of its contrasts and contradictions, not its coherence and continuity."

"I think the future is something that always has to be thought of in relatively concrete terms — and it has to be different from the present ... Only something that's different from the present and very concrete can have any sort of charismatic force. Looking at Western Europe, I would say, there are ... basically three plausible futures on offer. Number one is Islamic sharia law, and if you're a woman you get to wear a burqa. Number two is totalitarian AI à la China, where the computers track you in everything you do — all the time — and that's kind of creepy. So the Eye of Sauron, to use the Lord of the Rings reference, is watching you at all times. And then the third one is hyper-environmentalism, where you drive an e-scooter and you recycle. And even though I'm not a radical environmentalist ... if those are the three choices, I think you can understand why the Green Movement is winning — because those are the three visions of the future we have. And the challenge on the conservative or libertarian side is to offer something that is a picture of the future that's different from these two dystopian and one somewhat stagnant one."

"Europeans may wish to opt out of the global battle for corporate domination. They may even hope that they may thus achieve a greater degree of freedom for democratic politics. But the risk is that their growing reliance on other people’s technology, the relative stagnation of the eurozone and the consequent dependence of Europe’s growth model on exports to other people’s markets will render those pretensions to autonomy quite empty. Rather than an autonomous actor, Europe risks becoming the object of other people’s capitalist corporatism. Indeed, as far as international finance is concerned, the die has already been cast. In the wake of the double crisis, Europe is out of the race. The future will be decided between the survivors of the crisis in the United States and the newcomers of Asia. They may choose to locate in the City of London, but after Brexit even that cannot be taken for granted. Wall Street, Hong Kong and Shanghai may simply bypass Europe."

"I would rather visit Latin America or the Middle East than Europe. The people – especially Arabs and Kurds – are more pleasant to be around."

"Europe is and will be a Union of States."

"I am a citizen of the greatest Republic of Mankind. I see the human race united like a huge family by brotherly ties. We have made a sowing of liberty which will, little by little, spring up across the whole world. One day, on the model of the United States of America, a United States of Europe will come into being. The United States will legislate for all its nationalities."

"A gay peninsula filled with sprightly people who ate peppered food, drank strong liquors, wore flamboyant clothes, loved and murdered easily and had a splendid talent for starting wars."

"The next great European war will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans."

"In the Balkans, too, there were multiple civil wars along ethnic, religious and ideological lines [during World War II]. Yugoslavia had fallen apart in the wake of the German invasion of April 1941. Seizing the moment, the Croatian leader Ante Pavelic had pledged to side with Hitler. In the ensuing chaos, his Ustasas waged a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against their Serbian neighbours in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, torturing and killing hundreds of thousands of them. The populations of entire villages were packed into their churches and burned to death, or were transported to be murdered at camps like Jasenovac. Serbian Cetniks and Partisans repaid these crimes in kind. Of the million or so people who died in Yugoslavia during the war, most were killed by other Yugoslavs. This included nearly all of Bosnia's 14,000 Jews. In Greece the German occupation was the cue for bitter conflict. There, as in Yugoslavia, a three-cornered war raged - between the foreign invaders and nationalists, but also between nationalists and indigenous Communists. When Bulgaria annexed southern Dobruja from Romania, tens of thousands of people were expelled from their homes on either side of the new border."

"It is very important to send a new signal of confidence and hope that this (Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo) accession (into the European Union) process is wanted by the EU (European Union) with great seriousness, and that it also has a realistic chance if everyone makes an effort."

"In general, I am an opponent of Pan-Slavism. I do not think that we should be doing anything either in the Balkans or with the Slavs. But the West has now tipped the balance very heavily against Serbia, as if she is to blame for everything. But it's not the Serbs or Croats or Bosnians who are guilty. In Yugoslavia the problems began for the same reason as in the U.S.S.R. The communists--they had Tito, we had Lenin and Stalin--charted out arbitrary, ethnically nonsensical and historically unjustifiable internal administrative boundaries, and for years moved inhabitants from one region to another. And when--also in the period of a few days--Yugoslavia began to fall apart, the leading powers of the West, with inexplicable haste and irresponsibility, rushed to recognize these states within their artificial borders. Therefore, for the exhausting, bloody war which is today convulsing the unfortunate peoples of the former Yugoslavia, the leaders of the Western powers must share the blame with Tito. Now, attempting to somehow correct the very problem they helped to create, they essentially repeat the well-known maxim of Metternich [the backward-looking Hapsburg diplomat who dominated the post-Napoleonic Congress of Vienna in the early 19th century] for the Holy Alliance: "Intervention for the sake of making others healthy." Today the slogan is "Intervention for the sake of humanism." It is an ironic similarity! But intervention is a very dangerous thing. It is not so easy for the great powers to control the world."

"Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into."

"We no longer enjoy the same liberties Americans do. We don't have a constitution. We don't have a First Amendment. What we have, and what the whole of Europe has, is the Lisbon Treaty, a kind of top-down constitution that has been imposed on us against our will. And, unlike the American Constitution which empowers the people, the European constitution dis-empowers the people, and empowers the un-elected bureaucrats and career politicians for whose sole benefit it was created."

"What happens at 11pm this Friday the 31st of January 2020 marks the point of no return. Once we’ve left, we’re never coming back and the rest frankly is detail. We’re going, and we will be gone. And that should be the summit of my own political ambitions. I walked in here, you all thought it was terribly funny but you stopped laughing in 2016. But my view of Europe has changed since I joined. In 2005, I saw the constitution that had been drafted… and saw it rejected by the French in a referendum. I saw it rejected by the Dutch in a referendum. And I saw you, in these institutions, ignore them. [You brought it back] as the Lisbon treaty, and boast you could ram it through without there being referendums. Well, the Irish did have a vote and did say no, and were forced to vote again. You’re very good at making people to vote again, but what we’ve proved is the British are too big to bully, thank goodness. So I became an outright opponent of the whole European project. I want Brexit to start a debate across the whole of Europe. What do we want from Europe? If we want trade, friendship cooperation, reciprocity, we don’t need a European Commission, we don’t need a European court. We don’t need these institutions and all of this power. And I can promise you, both in UKIP and in the Brexit party, we love Europe. We just hate the European Union."

"That's what it's like when people have crawled very high up in a tree, then they sometimes need help to get down with ladders and ropes and other instruments."

"The one who wins in these kinds of situations is the one with the strongest nerves."

"The presidency repeatedly and intensively tried to cater to the Polish requests and gave in a final step far-reaching concessions to Poland. They were rejected by the Polish side. In this situation the presidency will suggest not to let Europe stand still. We will therefore try to give a strong signal about the capacity of this summit to act and to record the progress of the discussions of the past six months in a common mandate for the other member states on the diplomatic conference. Poland would then have the chance to join the European consensus at the governmental conference in autumn."

"What this means for us is that we are moving out of stoppage. We managed to get all 27 states on board in the end."

"The way [UK, Poland and other governments] insisted in denying every emotional aspect of Europe [flag, anthem, motto] hurt me (...) And then it is those same governments who complain that the idea of Europe is distant from the people. But how can you involve citizens without involving their emotions?"

"The constitutional treaty was an easily understandable treaty. This is a simplified treaty which is very complicated."

"If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'."

"The fundamentals of the Constitution have been maintained in large part … We have renounced everything that makes people think of a state, like the flag and the national anthem.”"

"The good thing is that all the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really matters – the core – is left."

"This was France’s idea from the start."

"[The mandate approved by the EU] will preserve the substance of the constitutional treaty."

"Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German foreign minister, Agence Europe, 25 June 2007."

"There’s nothing from the original institutional package that has been changed.”"

"A great part of the content of the European Constitution is captured in the new treaties … Everyone has conceded a little so that we all gain a lot.”"

"This text is, in fact, a rerun of a great part of the substance of the constitutional treaty.”"

"For the commission the key goal was to save as much as possible from the 2004 text. On reading and rereading the new text, one can safely conclude that most has been preserved. The essentials have been retained."

"The Constitution will have another name but the same content. Therefore it should also be put for Referendums.""

"Many claim that the Lisbon treaty and the Constitution are 90% identical. Well, the DNA of mice and humans is 90% the same - but the remaining 10% is rather important. The point is that the idea of repealing all the existing treaties and replacing them with a new 'constitution' has been dropped in favour of keeping the existing treaties and simply amending them."

"The real casualty was idealism: losing the symbols of our Union and replacing the relative simplicity of the Constitutional Treaty with bureaucratic opaqueness is a pity. As a result, your new Amending Treaty reads like the instructions for building a Japanese pagoda translated into English by the Chinese middle-man."

"I am astonished at those who are afraid of the people: one can always explain that what is in the interest of Europe is in the interests of our countries." "Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?" "There is a single legal personality for the EU, the primacy of European law, a new architecture for foreign and security policy, there is an enormous extension in the fields of the EU's powers, there is Charter of Fundamental Rights."

"Undaunted, the Brussels establishment continued to pursue unification. By 2005 it had sought to adopt a new constitution, overseen by the veteran French politician Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. This awarded the EU a third presidency (now of the European Council as well as its Commission and Parliament), and further extended majority voting in the European Council. This ran into immediate trouble. Rarely in the EU’s history were the peoples of Europe directly consulted on its powers, or even its existence. Decisions were taken by elected governments. The Giscard constitution was rejected in French and Dutch referendums, and the final treaty by the Irish. These votes were either rerun or ignored. The final Treaty of Lisbon was signed in 2007, with virtually no concessions to subsidiary nationalism, its authors blind to any incipient resentment it might breed."

"Norway would have been better off inside the EU."

"For many generations, Norway, with its homely, rugged population engaged in trade, shipping, fishing, and agriculture, had stood outside the turmoil of world politics. Far off were the days when the Vikings had sallied forth to conquer or ravage a large part of the then-known world. The Hundred Years' War, the Thirty Years' War, the wars of William III and Marlborough, the Napoleonic convulsion, and later conflicts had left Norway―though separated from Denmark―unmoved and unscathed. A large proportion of the people had hitherto thought of neutrality and neutrality alone. A tiny army and a population with no desires except to live peaceably in their own mountainous and semi-Arctic country now fell victims to the new German aggression."

"I have to say that everybody from David Cameron to half this panel say, "Wouldn't it be terrible if we were like Norway and Switzerland?" Really? They're rich. They're happy. They're self governing."

"[...] and you, my compatriots in Norway, have no grounds for complaining that we have forgotten the dear, familiar and specific character with which God has endowed our land and our nation. That is so firmly entrenched in our being that it finds expression, whether we like it or not. Do not, therefore, insult us further with such [an accusation]; it hurts our feelings, and thereby proves how unfounded it is, for otherwise it would be easy to treat it with indifference."

"We have been given an assignment as a monarchy, and we do as well as we can … We try to be as little populistic as possible. We don't do anything on the spur of the moment to win an opinion poll, or short-term popularity."

"Yesterday, on the 17th of May, we Norwegians celebrated our constitution day to mark the signing of Norway's constitution in 1814. Maybe it is because we are a small country: In Norway this is an important day. All over Norway children have paraded in their best clothes to the music of thousands of marching bands, and countless speeches have been made to remind each others, as fellow Norwegians, that freedom should never be taken for granted."

"The Soviet leaders have always disliked and feared the North Atlantic Alliance, and all that it stands for. They did their utmost to prevent it being born. You will remember that just as your distinguished Foreign Minister Mr. Lange was about to leave Oslo for Washington to enquire about the North Atlantic Treaty, a Note was received from the Soviet Government inviting Norway to conclude a non-aggression pact with them. Norway made her choice. She declined the Russian offer; and on the 3rd March, 1949 decided to join the Atlantic Alliance, while making it clear that she would not allow armed forces of foreign powers to be stationed in Norway so long as the country had not been attacked or threatened with attack. Thus the Soviet failed to prevent the Treaty being signed, but this did not deter them from trying to prevent the Alliance being extended or strengthened. When there was a question of Greece and Turkey joining the Alliance, the Soviet did their utmost by a mixture of blandishment and threats to prevent their doing so. Two years ago they took exactly the same line when the question of the accession of the Federal Republic of Germany was under consideration."

"The Northmen are often said to have burst out of their coastal settlements in what is now Sweden, Norway, and Denmark at the end of the eighth century. The most famous account of their arrival into the Christian realms of the west comes from Britain. In 793 warriors appeared off the coast of Northumbria, leaped from their ships, and robbed the island of Lindisfarne, desecrating the monastery and murdering its brothers. This ferocious raid sent shock waves rippling out from Britain. When the news reached Charlemagne’s court in Aachen, Alcuin of York wrote to the king of Northumbria, deploring the fact that “the church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishing, exposed to the plundering of pagans.” He suggested to the king that he and his noblemen might mend their ways, starting by adopting more Christian haircuts and clothing styles. But it was too late for any of that. The Northmen had announced themselves as a major power in the western world. The next year, 794, raiders appeared on the other side of the British Isles, in the Hebrides. In 799 Vikings raided the monastery of Saint-Philibert at Noirmoutier, just to the south of the river Loire. Sixty years later Viking raids would be a painful feature of life not only in the North and Irish Seas but as far away as Lisbon, Seville, and north Africa, as Northmen tangled with Anglo-Saxons, Irish, Umayyads, and Franks. In 860 a band of Viking-descended warriors from what is now northwest Russia even sailed to Constantinople via the river Dnieper and the Black Sea, and laid the city under siege. Although exposed only to a tiny part of this, the chronicler of Noirmoutier wrote what could have been an epigram for the entire age: “The number of ships grows, the endless stream of Vikings never ceases to increase . . . the Vikings conquer everything in their path and nothing resists them.”"

"Americans reflexively believe that 'Had Germany occupied the United States, nearly all of us would have joined an armed resistance to the Nazis. That's what I thought, too, when I was 16. But that reflects a hopelessly naive view, both of what the world looked like to most people after the Nazis had conquered Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and France, and of what it actually meant to take up arms against an occupying power'."

"We talk about the people who came to Russia with an intention either to work or to visit relatives. They had not declared that their real purpose of the visit was to flee to Norway. This means that they had deliberately provided false information about the purpose of their visit to Russia. This is why we do not want to take these people back."

"The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now one of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front. Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on."

"Relations between Malaysia and Norway have grown steadily in a very short span of time, founded as they are on our commitment to the free enterprise system, our pursuit of close regional cooperation in our respective regions and our abiding faith in, and commitment to, the ideals and aspirations of the United Nations. There have been a number of high-level exchange of visits between our two countries in the past two years. I am glad to say that the relations between Malaysia and Norway have been on the upswing since my visit to Oslo last year. The signing of the agreement for the parallel financing by Norway of two mini-hydro projects in the States of Kedah and Selangor is yet another milestone in our bilateral relations."

"If there is anyone who still wonders why this war is being fought, let him look to Norway. If there is anyone who has any delusions that this war could have been averted, let him look to Norway; and if there is anyone who doubts the democratic will to win, again I say, let him look to Norway."

"We have a high standard of living. … In Norway, we've tripled our income since 1970. In the rest of western Europe, income has merely doubled."

"Surely even the most vehement of ideologues couldn't find anything wrong with Norway?"

"So what is Norway? Norway is high mountains and deep s. It is wide open spaces and rocky coastlines. It is islands and archipelagos. It is lush farmland and rolling moors. The sea laps Norway’s shores in the north, west and south. Norway is midnight sun and polar night. It is harsh winters and mild winters. It is hot summers and cold summers. Norway is a long and sparsely populated country. But above all, Norway is its people."

"come from North Norway, , – and all of the other regions. Norwegians have immigrated from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Poland, from Sweden, Somalia and Syria. My grandparents came here from Denmark and England 110 years ago."

"Norwegians believe in God, Allah, the Universe and nothing."

"Norway is you. Norway is us."

"It is typical norwegian to be good."

"My greatest hope for Norway is that we will be able to take care of one another. That we will continue to build this country – on a foundation of trust, fellowship and generosity of spirit. That we will feel that we are – despite our differences – one people. That Norway is one."

"Norway did not even have a revolution at the time the rest of Europe was busy figuring out human rights and stuff, because we were busy fighting over how to spell it."

"Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!"

"The starkness and coldness of Norway itself is embedded in the bones of"

"Though in 1346 there were few differences between Western and Eastern Europe in terms of political and economic institutions, by 1600 they were worlds apart. In the West, workers were free of feudal dues, fines, and regulations and were becoming a key part of a booming market economy. In the East, they were also involved in such an economy, but as coerced serfs growing the food and agricultural goods demanded in the West. It was a market economy, but not an inclusive one. This institutional divergence was the result of a situation where the differences between these areas initially seemed very small: in the East, lords were a little better organized; they had slightly more rights and more consolidated landholdings. Towns were weaker and smaller, peasants less organized. In the grand scheme of history, these were small differences. Yet these small differences between the East and the West became very consequential for the lives of their populations and for the future path of institutional development when the feudal order was shaken up by the Black Death."

"I remember vividly in 1974 being in the mass of people, descending the streets in my native Lisbon, in Portugal, celebrating the democratic revolution and freedom. This same feeling of joy was experienced by the same generation in Spain and Greece. It was felt later in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Baltic States when they regained their independence. Several generations of Europeans have shown again and again that their choice for Europe was also a choice for freedom. I will never forget Rostropovich playing Bach at the fallen Wall in Berlin. This image reminds the world that it was the quest for freedom and democracy that tore down the old divisions and made possible the reunification of the continent. Joining the European Union was essential for the consolidation of democracy in our countries. Because it places the person and respect of human dignity at its heart. Because it gives a voice to differences while creating unity. And so, after reunification, Europe was able to breathe with both its lungs, as said by Karol Wojtiła. The European Union has become our common house. The “homeland of our homelands” as described by Vaclav Havel."

"In the very different circumstances and culture of Eastern Europe, in contrast, Communist regimes successively collapsed in 1989. The end of the Cold War had been long envisaged, but largely through negotiations between states. That was not to be the key element in 1989. Instead, Gorbachev unintentionally provoked the fall of the Soviet bloc. His attempts to push through modernisation in Eastern Europe (which totally surprised the East German leadership who argued that there was no need for reform or openness) left the regimes weak in the face of popular demand for reform and for more change. Moreover, Gorbachev was unwilling to use the Soviet Army to maintain these regimes. Visiting Prague in April 1987, Gorbachev repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine of intervention in order to uphold Communism (‘the defence of the Socialist Commonwealth’ in Soviet terms), intervention which had been used in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Instead, Gorbachev claimed that ‘fraternal parties determine their political line with a view to national conditions’. On 7 December 1988, he announced, significantly at the United Nations in New York rather than at a Communist gathering, that Eastern European states should be free to choose their own political path. This was a clear signal for change, and for a reduction in international tension. In his speech, Gorbachev also declared that the Soviet armed forces would be cut."

"Just pause for a moment to reflect on what we've done. Germany is united, and a slab of the Berlin Wall sits right outside this Astrodome. Arabs and Israelis now sit face to face and talk peace, and every hostage held in Lebanon is free. The conflict in El Salvador is over, and free elections brought democracy to Nicaragua. Black and white South Africans cheered each other at the Olympics. The Soviet Union can only be found in history books. The captive nations of Eastern Europe and the Baltics are captive no more. And today on the rural streets of Poland, merchants sell cans of air labeled "the last breath of communism." If I had stood before you 4 years ago and described this as the world we would help to build, you would have said, "George Bush, you must have been smoking something, and you must have inhaled." This convention is the first at which an American President can say the cold war is over, and freedom finished first."

"I have visited most parts of the Central European country, and am familiar with people from every district. Shall I picture them all to myself? Then in thought I am in a peasant's cottage in Lower Germany, in a country house in Upper Germany, in an Alpine inn, in a little town in Bohemia, in the industrial region in Upper Silesia, in a shop in Posen, in an hotel in Tatra, with friends in Budapest, at the port at Triest, at home in Berlin, in the splendid old cathedral of St. Stephen in Vienna, in the silence of the Böhmerwald, on the shore at Rügen; and so on continually forms arise of men, women and children, and I hear every German accent, from the broad Frisian Plattdeutsch to the Tyrolean Mountain German, from the softness of the Lower Rhine to the sharpness of East Prussia, from the Mecklenburg calm to the Viennese liveliness, and in addition there is the sound of Danish in the North, French in the West, Italian and Croatian in the South, Tzechish in Bohemia, Magyar, Roumanian and Polish in the South-East and East. (...) And nowhere are limits or divisions sharply fixed."

"We, representing together more than fifty million people constituting a chain of nations lying between the Baltic, the Adriatic and the Black Seas, comprising Czecho-Slovaks, Poles, Jugoslavs, Ukrainians, Uhro-Rusyns, Lithuanians, Roumanians and Italian Irredentists, Unredeemed Greeks, Albanians, Zionists, and Armenians, wholly or partly subject to alien domination (...) We have suffered destruction of our cities, violation of our homes and lands, and have maintained our ideals only by stealth, and in spite of the tyranny of our oppressors. We have been deprived of proper representation and fair trial. We have been denied the right of free speech, and the right freely to assemble and petition for the redress of our grievances. We have been denied free and friendly intercourse with our sister states, and our men have been impressed in war against their brothers and friends of kindred races."

"Who rules East Europe commands the heartland, who rules the heartland commands the world."

"If you ask me what is my native country, I answer: I was born in Fiume, grew up in Belgrade, Budapest, Pressburg, Vienna and Munich, and I have a Hungarian passport; but I have no fatherland. I am a very typical mix of old Austria-Hungary: at once Magyar, Croatian, German and Czech; my country is Hungary, my mother tongue is German."

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone - Greece with its immortal glories - is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place."

"The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy. Turkey and Persia are both profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are being made upon them and at the pressure being exerted by the Moscow Government."

"(...) There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration. (...) I don't believe (...) that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Rumanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union."

"Over Central Europe there rises the heavy smell of boiled cabbage, stale beer, and the soapy whiff of overripe water melons (...) The frontiers are vague and irrational; and it is only the smell which permits one to identify [the region] with absolute certainty."

"(...) Three fundamental situations developed in Europe after the war: that of Western Europe, that of Eastern Europe, and, most complicated, that of the part of Europe situated geographically in the center – culturally in the West and politically in the East."

"I assume there is such a thing as Central Europe, even though many people deny its existence, beginning with statesmen and journalists who persist in calling it "Eastern Europe" and ending with my friend Joseph Brodsky, who prefers to reserve for it the name of "Western Asia." In these decades of the 20th century, Central Europe seems to exist only in the minds of some of its intellectuals."

"In the work of Havel and Konrád there is an interesting semantic division of labour. Both authors use the terms "Eastern Europe" or "East European" when the context is neutral or negative; when they write "Central" or "East Central," the statement is invariably positive, affirmative, or downright sentimental."

"Every Central European family has its own stormy history in which family catastrophes and national catastrophes are mingled. History is more than erudition here, it is the inner meaning of actions, a validating tradition, a largely unconscious norm and parameter for conduct today."

"Europe is living through an exceptional period. Part of our continent torn up from its roots almost half a century ago is now aspiring to return. Back to Europe! This expression is gaining currency these days in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe."

"I'm delighted to be here in Eastern, I mean Central Europe."

"Eastern Europe is now east-central Europe."

"Tell me where Central Europe is, and I can tell who you are."

"Central Europe is a dynamic historical concept, not a static spatial one; therefore its frontiers have shifted throughout the ages."

"In the late nineteenth century, the concept of a German-dominated Mitteleuropa was launched to coincide with the political sphere of the Central Powers. In the inter-war years, a domain called "East Central Europe" was invented to coincide with the newly independent "successor states" – from Finland and Poland to Yugoslavia. This was revived again after 1945 as a convenient label for the similar set of nominally independent countries which were caught inside the Soviet bloc. By that time the main division, between a "Western Europe" dominated by NATO and the EEC and an "Eastern Europe" dominated by Soviet communism seemed to be set in stone. In the 1980s a group of writers led by the Czech novelist, Milan Kundera, launched a new version of "Central Europe", to break down the reigning barriers. Here was yet another configuration, another true "kingdom of the spirit"."

"For all the participants in this fascinating debate, "Central Europe" was defined, not by geography, but by values. "Central Europe" was, in György Konrád's words, a Weltanschauung, not a Staatsangehörigkeit (i.e., a way of looking at the world rather than a question of citizenship); for Leszek Kołakowski it was a "culturally connected area"; for Stefan Kaszyński a "state of mind"; for Czesław Miłosz "a way of thinking"."

"No one writing about Transcarpathia can resist retelling the region's favourite anecdote: A visitor, encountering one of the oldest local inhabitants, asks about his life. The reply: "I was born in Austria-Hungary, I went to school in Czechoslovakia, I did my army service in Horthy's Hungary, followed by a spell in prison in the USSR. Now I am ending my days in independent Ukraine." The visitor expresses surprise at how much of the world the old man has seen. "But no!," he responds, "I've never left this village!""

"Indeed by 1919 there could be no question of saving the old arrangements in Central and Eastern Europe. The nationalists had already torn them apart. From the distance of seventy years it is customary to regard Austria-Hungary as a tranquil exercise in multi-racialism. In fact it was a nightmare of growing racial animosity. Every reform created more problems than it solved. Hungary got status within the empire as a separate state in 1867. It at once began to oppress its own minorities, chiefly Slovaks and Romanians, with greater ferocity and ingenuity than it itself had been oppressed by Austria. Elections were suspect, and the railways, the banking system and the principles of internal free trade were savagely disrupted in the pursuit of racial advantage immediately any reform made such action possible. Czechs and other Slav groups followed the Hungarians' example. No ethnic group behaved consistently. What the Germans demanded and the Czechs refused in Bohemia, the Germans refused and the Italians and south Slovenes demanded in the South Tyrol and Styria. All the various Diets and Parliaments, in Budapest, Prague, Graz, and Innsbruck were arenas of merciless racial discord. In Galicia, the minority Ruthenians fought the majority Poles. In Dalmatia the minority Italians fought the majority South Slavs. As a result it was impossible to form an effective parliamentary government. All of the twelve central governments between 1900 and 1918 had to be composed almost entirely of civil servants. Each local government, from which minorities were excluded, protected its home industries where it was legally empowered to do so, and if not, organized boycotts of goods made by other racial groups. There was no normality in the old empire."

"Now, you're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east. And there are a lot of new members."

"Concernant en tous les cas les pays candidats, (...) honnêtement, je trouve qu'ils se sont comportés avec une certaine légèreté. Car entrer dans l'Union européenne, cela suppose tout de même un minimum de considération pour les autres, un minimum de concertation. Si, sur le premier sujet difficile, on se met à donner son point de vue indépendamment de toute concertation avec l'ensemble dans lequel, par ailleurs, on veut entrer, alors, ce n'est pas un comportement bien responsable. En tous les cas, ce n'est pas très bien élevé. Donc, je crois qu'ils ont manqué une bonne occasion de se taire."

"There are several kinds of monsters in western popular culture today: werewolves, vampires, morlaks, the blood-countess and other creatures of the underworld. (...) Vampirism, and (...) monstrosity has been fundamentally intertwined with Eastern Europe (...) [I]s it only an accident that the four most enduring popular culture villains, Frankenstein, Count Dracula (Nosferatu), the Morlak and the Golem had emerged in Europe during modernity (...)? That all four creatures are connected somehow to Eastern European regions?"

"I am one of the servants of Allah. We do our duty of fighting for the sake of the religion of Allah. It is also our duty to send a call to all the people of the world to enjoy this great light and to embrace Islam and experience the happiness in Islam. Our primary mission is nothing but the furthering of this religion. ... Let not the West be taken in by those who say that Muslims choose nothing but slaughtering. Their brothers in East Europe, in Turkey and in Albania have been guided by Allah to submit to Islam and to experience the bliss of Islam. Unlike those, the European and the American people and some of the Arabs are under the influence of Jewish media."

"In Eastern Europe, countries still struggle to fulfill the promise of a strong democracy, or a vibrant market economy. Who to look to better than you? Who to look to better than Central European countries that 20 years ago acted with such courage and resolve, and over the last 20 years, have made such sustainable progress? You can help guide Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine along the path of lasting stability and prosperity. It's your time to lead. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus can benefit from your personal experiences."

"Around the same time, communism in Central and Eastern Europe finally fell, but its economic rivalry with capitalism had, of course, long since been decided. It’s easy to think that these countries were never close to the market economies, but in 1950 countries such as the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary had a GDP per capita about a quarter higher than poor Western countries such as Spain, Portugal and Greece. In 1989, the eastern states were nowhere close. The eastern part of Germany was richer than West Germany before World War II. When the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, East Germany’s GDP per capita was not even half that of West Germany’s. Of these countries, those that liberalized the most have on average developed the fastest and established the strongest democracies. An analysis of twenty-six post-communist countries showed that a 10 per cent increase in economic freedom was associated with a 2.7 per cent faster annual growth. Political and economic institutions have improved the most in the Central and Eastern European countries that are now members of the EU, not least the Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Today, they are some of the freest countries in the world and have more than tripled average incomes since independence. But one can also observe a recent reformer like Georgia. It was seen as an economic basket case, but after the Rose Revolution in 2003 it increased per capita incomes almost threefold and cut extreme poverty rates by almost two-thirds."

"In the late 1800s, Europe had a peaceable bull’s-eye in the northern industrialized countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, and the Low Countries), bordered by slightly stroppier Ireland, Austria-Hungary, and Finland, surrounded in turn by still more violent Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Slavic countries. Today the peaceable center has swelled to encompass all of Western and Central Europe, but a gradient of lawlessness extending to Eastern Europe and the mountainous Balkans is still visible. There are gradients within each of these countries as well: the hinterlands and mountains remained violent long after the urbanized and densely farmed centers had calmed down. Clan warfare was endemic to the Scottish highlands until the 18th century, and to Sardinia, Sicily, Montenegro, and other parts of the Balkans until the 20th. It’s no coincidence that the two blood-soaked classics with which I began this book—the Hebrew Bible and the Homeric poems—came from peoples that lived in rugged hills and valleys."

"Central Europe has several recognizably common architectural features that make some towns in Galicia look remarkably like towns in Transylvania and Slovakia; shared musicians—Liszt, Chopin, Mahler, Dvořák, Smetana, Bartók, Kodály; shared writers, such as Musil, Gombrowicz, Koestler, Brod, Mickiewicz, Kafka, Roth, Zweig, Faludy; and some peculiar shared traditions, such as the tiny coffee spoon and the oversweet desserts with whipping cream."

"Eastern Europe caused constant alarm in the Soviet supreme leadership. The suppression of the Hungarian Uprising had been traumatic for Khrushchëv. He had thought he was relaxing communist rule for everybody’s benefit but found that societies west of the Soviet Union hated their oppressors. The Prague Spring was less traumatic for Brezhnev, who had never promised reform in eastern Europe; his conscience, if he had one, was untroubled by his decision to send Warsaw Pact forces into Czechoslovakia in 1968. But military action dealt only with the symptoms. It offered no fundamental cure for the malaise of communism across the entire eastern half of the continent. From Stalin to Brezhnev the sickly phenomena persisted. The ‘colonies’ in eastern Europe had turned into a multinational drain on the Soviet budget. Nuclear missile bases had to be supplied if the threat of attack by NATO was to be faced down. The Soviet army also maintained garrisons which needed equipping and financing. These disgruntled troops were locally very unpopular and Moscow took the precaution of secluding its contingents well away from regular contact with the country’s civilian inhabitants. It was a most peculiar empire which resorted to such expedients. This was not all. Communised economies in eastern Europe were constructed on the Soviet model. It is true that Poland refrained from collectivising most of its peasantry; but industry, commerce, finance and transport copied the templates invented in the pre-war USSR. The result was permanent economic inadequacy. The countries of eastern Europe lacked the USSR’s abundance of natural resources. If Moscow wished to salvage the situation, it had to reconcile itself to the unceasing subsidisation of gas and oil exports."

"In their native countries, Roosevelt and Churchill are regarded as examples of wise statesmen. But we, during our jail conversations, were astonished by their constant shortsightedness and even stupidity. How could they, retreating gradually from 1941 to 1945, leave Eastern Europe without any guarantees of independence? How could they abandon the large territories of Saxony and Thuringia in return for such a ridiculous toy as the four-zoned Berlin that, moreover, was later to become their Achille’s heel? And what kind of military or political purpose did they see in giving away hundreds of thousands of armed Soviet citizens (who were unwilling to surrender, whatever the terms) for Stalin to have them killed? It is said that by doing this, that they secured the imminent participation of Stalin in the war against Japan. Already armed with the Atomic bomb, they did pay for Stalin so that he wouldn’t refuse to occupy Manchuria to help Mao Zedong to gain power in China and Kim Il Sung, to get half of Korea!… Oh, misery of political calculation! When later Mikolajczyk was expelled, when the end of Beneš and Masaryk came, Berlin was blocked, Budapest was in flames and turned silent, when ruins fumed in Korea and when the conservatives fled from Suez – didn’t really some of those who had a better memory, recall for instance the episode of giving away the Cossacks?"

"But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening. A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger -- 60 years for our people and 30 years for the people of Eastern Europe. During that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life's complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting characters than those generally [produced] by standardized Western well-being. Therefore, if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant scores. It is true, no doubt, that a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to elect such mechanical legalistic smoothness as you have. After the suffering of many years of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music."

"To my mind, imperialism is something very simple and clear and it exists as a fact when one country, a large country, seizes a certain strip of territory and subjects to its laws a certain number of men and women against their will. Soviet policy after the beginning of the second world war was precisely this. There is no difficulty in pointing this out, but the difficulty lies in the fact that when one quotes from memory one will forget one or other argument. Because the Russians, thanks to the second world war, have quite simply annexed the three Baltic States, taken a piece of Finland, a piece of Rumania, a piece of Poland, a piece of Germany and, thanks to a well thought-out policy composed of internal subversion and external pressure, have established Governments justifiably styled as Satellites, in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest, Tirana and East Berlin - I except Belgrade where the regime is unique thanks to the energy and courage of Marshal Tito. If all this does not constitute manifestations of imperialism, if all this is not the result of a policy consciously willed and consciously pursued, an imperialist aim, then indeed we shall have to start to go back to a new discussion and a new definition of words."

"Twenty-five years ago we [Poland] were eastern Europe. When we joined Nato and the EU, we became central Europe. Now, because of our resilience in the face of the financial crisis, we are northern Europe."

"The French writer, Albert Camus, once lamented that "man eventually becomes accustomed to everything". I have always believed that this is an unjustly pessimistic view of our human condition; and in recent weeks I have seen enough to convince me that Camus, on this point at least, was wrong: 30,000 East Germans abandoning home, friends, jobs, everything, to escape to a new life of opportunity but also uncertainty in the West; thousands of Soviet miners striking not for more pay, but for better supplies; the joy of Poles as they greet their first non-Communist Prime Minister in 40 years; over a million inhabitants of the Baltic states forming a human chain to protest against the forced annexation of their nations; demonstrators in Prague braving the security forces to mark the 21st anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion; or in Leipzig calling for freedom of speech. Clearly the peoples of the East have not become accustomed to their lot."

"Totalitarian rule has not made people less attracted by freedom, democracy and self-determination. The opposite is true. Nor has it made them incapable of exercising these values through political organization and self-expression: look at the debates in the new Congress of the People's Deputies, the activities of the popular fronts, Solidarity in Poland or the opposition parties in Hungary. The demand for pluralism and reform can now be heard in every Eastern nation. Some regimes have responded with a promising beginning: they are experiencing the turbulence of change but at least they are finally grappling with the real problems that have held them back for so long. Others have responded with repression, merely postponing the day of reckon-ing by loading their problems on to the future. In the meantime, their citizens fleed draining their economies of the precious skills and resources they will need most when ultimately they face up to the needs of tomorrow."

"With the euro, that form of pressure has gone."

"Our Union is more than an association of states. It is a new legal order, which is not based on the balance of power between nations but on the free consent of states to share sovereignty. From pooling coal and steel, to abolishing internal borders, from six countries to soon twenty-eight with Croatia joining the family this has been a remarkable European journey which is leading us to an “ever closer Union”. And today one of the most visible symbols of our unity is in everyone’s hands. It is the Euro, the currency of our European Union. We will stand by it."

"The most likely scenario is that EMU (Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union) will occur but will neither end Europe’s currency troubles nor solve its prosperity problems."

"Once Italy is in, with an appreciated currency, the country will soon be back on the ropes, just as in 1992, when the currency came under attack."

"The most serious criticism of EMU is that by abandoning exchange rate adjustments it transfers to the labor market the task of adjusting for competitiveness and relative prices... losses in output and employment (and pressure on the European central bank to inflate) will predominate."

"Italians dream that the ECB (European Central Bank) will make their life easier than the Bundesbank does now... The new central bank is certain to establish itself at the outset as a direct continuation of the German central bank."

"If there was ever a bad idea, EMU it is."

"Instead of increasing intra-European harmony and global peace, the shift to EMU and the political integration that would follow it would be more likely to lead to increased conflicts within Europe."

"Although 50 years of European peace since the end of World War II may augur well for the future, it must be remembered that there were also more than 50 year of peace between the Congress of Vienna and the Franco-Prussian War. Moreover, contrary to the hopes and assumptions of Jean Monnet and other advocates of European integration, the devastating American Civil War shows that a formal political union is no guarantee against an intra-European war."

"What is clear is that a French aspiration for equality and a German expectation of hegemony are not consistent."

"A critical feature of the EU(European Union) in general and EMU in particular is that there is no legitimate way for a member to withdraw... The American experience with the secession of the South may contain some lessons about the danger of a treaty or constitution that has no exits."

"When the Monetary Union was founded in 1992, it was a common understanding among economists that a monetary union of states of very different economic strength could function only if either economic policy was communalized as well or the strong states were willing to pay for the debts of the weaker states. Politicians ignored this warning. The financial crisis showed that the economic experts were right. The Monetary Union deprives the states of a number of fiscal instruments such as revaluation or devaluation of the currency. This contributed to the crisis."

"The fundamental problem of European monetary union lies in its incompleteness or lopsidedness. There was a much better preparation for the monetary side of monetary union than for the fiscal concomitants that should have underpinned its stability (and prevented the threat of large-scale monetisation of fiscal debt burdens). No adequate provision on a European basis existed for banking supervision and regulation, which, like fiscal policy, was left to diverse national authorities."

"The eurozone’s significance was more than symbolic. It implied the gradual synchronization of its members’ economies, including monetary policy, national investment and transfers between rich and poor regions. For northern Europe the euro bound Germany into ever closer union. For Spain, Italy and Greece, it was a double-edged sword. It signified merger with Europe’s most sophisticated economies, but also economic adjustments for which these countries were by no means ready. Britain had joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism, but dropped out with the pound under extreme pressure on ‘black Wednesday’ in 1992. The Major government declined to join the euro. It also ‘opted out’ of Maastricht’s ‘Social Chapter’, which covered areas such as employment rights."

"Europe’s political stability, social cohesion, economic prosperity and security are more threatened today than at any point since the Cold War, Russia is destabilizing the Continent on every front. Indigenous factors – whether long-extant nationalism, design flaws in the Eurozone, lack of a common foreign policy, or incapability at assimilating immigrants – certainly lie at the root of these crises."

"The euro is bad for Europe. The euro is bad for the Netherlands, it’s especially bad because it is a stimulus for politicians to kill the Welfare State. I look forward to a European economy using multiple currencies. In the end that will be much better: it will make us more resistant to shocks and makes us less vulnerable to what is happening now."

"What has happened, it turns out, is that by going on the euro, Spain and Italy in effect reduced themselves to the status of Third World countries that have to borrow in someone else’s currency, with all the loss of flexibility that implies."

"EMU wasn't designed to make everyone happy. It was designed to keep Germany happy - to provide the kind of stern anti-inflationary discipline that everyone knew Germany had always wanted and would always want in future."

"The clear and present danger is, instead, that Europe will turn Japanese: that it will slip inexorably into deflation, that by the time the central bankers finally decide to loosen up it will be too late."

"By trying to move prematurely to monetary union, we would run very serious risks. The dangers of forcing the pace have been amply demonstrated in Germany. Karl Otto Pohl, the director of the Bundesbank, has described Germany's experience as "a drastic object lesson" of the need for prior convergence before establishing a currency union. Reunification there has meant the rapid merger of two very different economies. The short-term consequences are a huge rise in the German budget deficit and rising unemployment in eastern Germany, but for the rest of the Community their experience is salutary. It shows the strains and tensions set up by moving to currency union before there is proper economic convergence. In the case of Germany one strong currency and one strong economy effectively took over those of a weaker neighbour. How much greater would those strains and tensions be if 12 very different states with different economies were now to adopt a single currency?"

"In a monetary union with irreversibly fixed exchange rates the weak would become ever weaker and the strong ever stronger. We would thus experience great tensions in the real economy of Europe. For this reason alone, monetary union without the simultaneous integration in fields like fiscal policy as well as regional and social policy is completely inconceivable... In order to create a European currency, the governments and parliaments of Europe would have to be prepared to transfer sovereign rights to a supranational institution."

"The idea that the euro has "failed" is dangerously naive. The euro is doing exactly what its progenitor – and the wealthy 1%-ers who adopted it – predicted and planned for it to do."

"ECB [European Central Bank] President Mario Draghi’s famous promise to do ‘whatever it takes’ to preserve the eurozone was a masterly move to buy time. But monetary policy cannot solve the currency union’s problems."

"Moving to a full monetary union in Europe is like putting the cart before the horse. A major shock would result in unbearable pressure within the Union because of limited labour mobility, inadequate fiscal redistribution, and a ECB (European Central Bank) that will probably want to keep monetary conditions tight in order to make the euro as strong as the dollar. This is surely the prescription for major future problems."

"There is yet one more version of the culture hypothesis: perhaps it is not English versus non-English that matters but, rather, European versus non-European. Could it be that Europeans are superior somehow because of their work ethic, outlook on life, Judeo-Christian values, or Roman heritage? It is true that Western Europe and North America, filled primarily by people of European descent, are the most prosperous parts of the world. Perhaps it is the superior European cultural legacy that is at the root of prosperity—and the last refuge of the culture hypothesis. Alas, this version of the culture hypothesis has as little explanatory potential as the others. A greater proportion of the population of Argentina and Uruguay, compared with the population of Canada and the United States, is of European descent, but Argentina’s and Uruguay’s economic performance leaves much to be desired. Japan and Singapore never had more than a sprinkling of inhabitants of European descent, yet they are as prosperous as many parts of Western Europe."

"With the accomplishment of the imperialist enterprise and the general confidence that space, people and nature could be successfully dominated, Western Europeans acquired the ultimate certainty of their superiority over the rest of the world. It is no wonder, then, that the Romantic and Orientalist enthusiasm, omnipresent in the first half of the century, was quickly annihilated. Dismissing previous attempts to proclaim the originality of ‘Oriental’ science and consolidating the integrity of ‘Western’ science was, indeed, a major characteristic of scholarship in the history of science during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The views became increasingly and consensually Helleno- and Eurocentrist, not in the ingenuous and instinctive manner of previous generations, but in systematic and dogmatic ways."

"Because their own civilization hardly goes any further back than the Graeco-Roman period and derives for the most part from it, Westerners are led to believe that it must have been the same in every other case, and they have difficulty in conceiving of the existence of entirely different and far more ancient civilizations. It might be said that they are mentally incapable of crossing the Mediterranean."

"As the twentieth century approached, therefore, the pace of technological change and uneven growth rates made the international system much more unstable and complex than it had been fifty years earlier. This was manifested in the frantic post-1880 jostling by the Great Powers for additional colonial territories in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, partly for gain, partly out of a fear of being eclipsed. It also manifested itself in the increasing number of arms races, both on land and at sea, and in the creation of fixed military alliances, even in peacetime, as the various governments sought out partners for a possible future war. Behind the frequent colonial quarrels and international crises of the pre-1914 period, however, the decade-by-decade indices of economic power were pointing to even more fundamental shifts in the global balances—indeed, to the eclipse of what had been, for over three centuries, essentially a Eurocentric world system. Despite their best efforts, traditional European Great Powers like France and Austria-Hungary, and a recently united one like Italy, were falling out of the race. By contrast, the enormous, continent-wide states of the United States and Russia were moving to the forefront, and this despite the inefficiencies of the czarist state. Among the western European nations only Germany, possibly, had the muscle to force its way into the select league of the future world Powers. Japan, on the other hand, was intent upon being dominant in East Asia, but not farther afield. Inevitably, then, all these changes posed considerable, and ultimately insuperable, problems for a British Empire which now found it much more difficult to defend its global interests than it had a half-century earlier."

"For 400 years, world history was made by Europeans. Many of the great ideas by which we live — constitutional government, freedom of the individual, the ideas of the Enlightenment — originated in Europe and were spread by Europe around the world. Now this region, which was dynamic and built the world, has become too preoccupied with itself. It confines itself basically to the exercise of soft power. At present, no European government has the capacity to ask its people for sacrifices on behalf of foreign policy. Unless Europe can recover some of its historic dynamism, there will be a big hole in the world system as it has until now manifested itself."

"This is why the mainstream Western academics does not teach Abhinavagupta, Aryabhata, Bharata, Bhartrihari, Shankara, Kalidasa, Kapila, Kautilya, Nagarjuna, Panini, Patanjali and Ramanuja, among many other Indian greats on par with the great Greek thinkers. This violates the principle that the classical thinkers of all civilizations ought to be incorporated into curricula based solely on their merit and current relevance."

"I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education. [...] It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England."

"Better understanding of the Asian mind ‑ Indian and Chinese ‑ had one further consequence which needs emphasis. It had been almost a dogma of European thought that everything of value arose in the regions that touched the Aegean Sea. Religion, philosophy, art and even science, it was claimed, originated in this area. In fact, for all civilization a Greek origin was postulated. A persistence in this belief was responsible in the early years of Oriental research for the futile attempts made to date events in Asia, especially Indian history, to periods where they could be conveniently adjusted to developments in Greece. That belief in a monopoly of wisdom for the Greeks had to be reluctantly abandoned, as a result of increased knowledge of Asian civilizations. The liberalization of the European mind consequent upon the recognition of the fact that all nations have contributed towards the growth of human civilization, is a gain of considerable significance."

"Wherever there was the least similarity between Indian and foreign ideas, Indians were taken to be the borrowers. The Epics were supposed to be indebted to Homer’s works, Indian drama, mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy were derived from the Greeks, and even Krishna cult was derived from Christ. The very poor evidence on which such theses were boldly enunciated, even by learned scholars, demonstrated a prejudiced mind rather than bad logical deduction or inference."

"The interpretation that underdevelopment is somehow ordained by God is emphasized because of the racist trend in European scholarship. It is in line with racist prejudice to say openly or to imply that their countries are more developed because their people are innately superior, and that the responsibility for the economic backwardness of Africa lies in the generic backwardness of the race of black Africans. An even bigger problem is that the people of Africa and other parts of the colonized world have gone through a cultural and psychological crisis and have accepted, at least partially, the European version of things. That means that the African himself has doubts about his capacity to transform and develop his natural environment. With such doubts, he even challenges those of his brothers who say that Africa can and will develop through the efforts of its own people. If we can determine when underdevelopment came about, it would dismiss the lingering suspicion that it is racially or otherwise predetermined and that we can do little about it."

"There were two main reasons why decolonization happened on such a wide scale in the 1950s and ’60s. The first was the social and economic exhaustion of the colonizing powers. In 1910 a European man, especially if he was French or British, could still safely assume that he was on top of the global pile. He may have been poor in his own country, or felt threatened by suffragettes or revolutionaries. But it was his country that had set the global agendas for as long as he could remember. The world economic system was created to make him produce and consume. His culture and his religion were assumed to be the envy of the world. And others, who were not Christian Europeans, who did not possess the Europeans’ science or technology, or military skills, or well-honed and ruthless administrations, were seen as distinctly inferior. Compare this with a generation later, in 1945. The European countries were exhausted by warfare and their inhabitants had themselves begun to doubt their centrality in the world. With what right did they rule others, when they could not avoid repeatedly tearing their own continent to pieces? Principles of racial superiority—at least those openly stated—now had a bad name. Hitler had seen to that. And was not the primary duty of a young Englishman or Frenchman to his own battered country, rather than to faraway places? Resources were scarce, and almost all Europeans wanted them spent at home."

"The EU agreed to turn Europe into an Arabian Islamic continent, in return for trade essentially"

"there are of course demographic projections from other people, such as at the rightwing blog HonestThinking, who have “with clear logic claimed that Norway […] may have a Muslim majority as early as around 2040 or 2050” (Berg 2007, 52)."

"the statistics cited in Eurabia literature for fertility rates, demographic trends and percentages of Muslims appear, without exception, to be seriously flawed."

"The USA will remain the only superpower. China is becoming an economic giant. Europe is being Islamicized."

"Stripped of its Islamic content, the broad contours of Ye’or’s preposterous thesis recall the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the first half of the twentieth century and contemporary notions of the ‘Zionist Occupation Government’ prevalent in far-right circles in the US."

"According to current birthrate projections, France will be a majority Muslim country anyway in about 50 years [...] I get a lot of e-mails from Americans who think that Europeans are spineless. And I think they're right."

"Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony...In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage in the Islamic expansionism."

"Sono quattr' anni che parlo di nazismo islamico, di guerra all' Occidente, di culto della morte, di suicidio dell' Europa. Un' Europa che non è più Europa ma Eurabia e che con la sua mollezza, la sua inerzia, la sua cecità, il suo asservimento al nemico si sta scavando la propria tomba."

"Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense."

"According to some, one out of three babies born in France is a Muslim."

"The data that we have isn't pointing in the direction of 'Eurabia' at all"

"Eurabia : The Euro-Arab Axis partage certaines de ses certitudes avec l'extrême droite. L'ouvrage cède allègrement à la paranoïa du complot"

"There is a quite deliberate exaggeration, as has often been pointed out—but the figures are still being cited."

"I think you should have titled your conference the Protocols of the Wise of Brussels [...] I think it's a conspiracy theory."

"Europe will be part of the Arab West, the Maghreb. This is what migration will mean for demography. Europeans marry late and have little or no children. But it has strong immigration: Turks in Germany, Arabs in France and Pakistanis in England. They marry early and have many children. According to the current trends Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population at the end of the 21st century at the latest."

"Mark Steyn for instance wrote a wonderfull book [...] Bat Ye'or of course, a great scholar, a great writer, with famous Eurabia [...] More than half the children in Amsterdam schools are non-Dutch [...] It will happen during our lifetime. This is not the distant future. 11 years until you lose the Netherlands"

"More than any other continent or culture in the world today, Europe is now deeply weighed down with guilt for its past. Alongside this outgoing version of self-distrust runs a more introverted version of the same guilt. For there is also the problem in Europe of an existential tiredness and a feeling that perhaps for Europe the story has run out and a new story must be allowed to begin. Mass immigration — the replacement of large parts of the European populations by other people — is one way in which this new story has been imagined: a change, we seemed to think, was as good as a rest. Such existential civilizational tiredness is not a uniquely modern-European phenomenon, but the fact that a society should feel like it has run out of steam at precisely the moment when a new society has begun to move in cannot help but lead to vast, epochal changes."

"[P]op prophets tell us that Muslims in Europe are reproducing so fast and European societies are so weak and listless that, before you know it, the continent will become "Eurabia," with all the topless gals on the Rivera wearing veils. Well, maybe not. The notion that continental Europeans, who are world-champion haters, will let the impoverished Muslim immigrants they confine to ghettos take over their societies and extent the caliphate from the Amalfi Coast to Amsterdam has it exactly wrong... Muslims are hardly welcome to pick up the trash on Europe's playgrounds. Don't let Europe's current round of playing pacifist dress up fool you: This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebenica... [H]istorical patterns are clear: When Europeans feel sufficiently threatened–even when the threat's concocted nonsense–they don't just react, they overreact with stunning ferocity. One of their more humane (and frequently employed) techniques has been ethnic cleansing."

"Europeans have enjoyed a comfy ride for the last sixty years–but the very fact that they don't want it to stop increases their rage and sense of being besieged by Muslim minorities they've long refused to assimilate (and which no longer want to assimilate)... When Europeans feel sufficiently provoked and threatened–a few serious terrorist attacks could do it–Europe's Muslims will be lucky just to be deported..."

"Europeans have just been better organized for genocide... Far from enjoying the prospect of taking over Europe by having babies, Europe’s Muslims are living on borrowed time... European Muslims can't become French or Dutch or Italian or German. Even if they qualify for a passport, they remain second-class citizens. On a good day. And they're supposed to take over the continent that's exported more death than any other? ... All the copy-cat predictions of a Muslim takeover of Europe not only ignore history and Europe’s ineradicable viciousness and Europe's ineradicable piousness, but do a serious disservice by exacerbating fear and hatred. And when it comes to hatred, trust me: The Europeans don't need our help."

"Picture a French election circa 2020, 2025: the Islamic Republican Coalition wins the most seats in the National Assembly."

"It seems more likely [...] that by 2010 we’ll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations [in EU] on American network news every night."

"I'm a "social conservative." When the mullahs take over, I'll grow my beard a little fuller, get a couple extra wives, and keep my head down. It's the feminists and gays who'll have a tougher time."

"the evidence suggests a third of all births [in France] are already Muslim."

"The analysis is clear, we have a great problem with Islam, in the Netherlands too. The solution is not so complicated; what is missing are political guts and a feeling of urgency. Immigration from Islamic countries should be forbidden. We must learn to be intolerant with the intolerant, in the street, in the mosque and in court. We must answer hatred and violence from terrorists with exclusion and intolerance and show who's the boss in The Netherlands."

"I've had enough of the Quran in The Netherlands: ban that fascist book."

"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."

"People are fed up with the criminality and the taxes they have to pay, which are the result of the islamisation of The Netherlands."

"Immigrants with a double nationality, who commit a crime, such as those many Moroccan street terrorists who are a hazard to the safety of large parts of The Netherlands, they have to hand in their Dutch passport and will leave the country."

"Islam is something we can't afford any more in the Netherlands. I want the fascist Koran banned. We need to stop the Islamisation of the Netherlands. That means no more mosques, no more Islamic schools, no more imams... Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims."

"Taqiyya is a well-known term in the Islamic world. It means that muslims who do not live in a muslim country (yet) often don't say everything they really think. But at the moment that the Islamic culture gets stronger there will also be muslims, who are now being seen as moderate, who follow along in the compulsive strictness of the Koran and its ideology. The term comes from the muslim world itself and should therefore not be underestimated. Therefore it is too easy to say that there are enough muslims who participate in our society. It does not say anything about how they are going to behave once there are more muslims represented in The Netherlands... The more dominant the Islamic culture in The Netherlands will be, the more distant we will become from anything that has to do with freedom, tolerance and equality. Because the Islam – in contrast with other religions – will not accept anything else but the Islam. The society will change for the worse. It is no 'clash of civilisations', but a collision between culture and barbarism and retardedness."

"The more dominant the Islamic culture in The Netherlands will be, the more distant we will become from anything that has to do with freedom, tolerance and equality. Because the Islam – in contrast with other religions – will not accept anything else but the Islam. The society will change for the worse. It is no 'clash of civilisations', but a collision between culture and barbarism and retardedness."

"Die lak hebben aan de belangen van de Nederlandse burger en meewerken aan de transformatie van Nederland in Nederabië als provincie van de islamitische superstaat Eurabië."

"In France approximately ten percent of the population are Muslims."

"a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now."

"Enthousiast werkt dit kabinet mee aan de islamisering van Nederland. In heel Europa zet de elite de sluizen open. Nog even en dan is één op de vijf mensen in de Europese Unie moslim."

"Libyan dictator Gaddafi said: "There are tens of millions of Muslims in the European continent today and their number is on the increase. This is the clear indication that the European continent will be converted into Islam. Europe will one day soon be a Muslim continent". End of quote. Indeed, for once in his life, Gaddafi was telling the truth. Because, remember: mass immigration and demographics is destiny!"

"All over Europe multicultural elites are waging total war against their populations. Their goal is to continue the strategy of mass-immigration, which will ultimately result in an Islamic Europe – a Europe without freedom: Eurabia."

"I have a panic room in my house, where I am supposed to take refuge if one of the adherents of the "religion of peace" makes it past my permanent security detail and into my home. In fact, it's not really my home at all—I live in a government safe house, heavily protected and bulletproof. Since November 2004, when a Muslim murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh for the crime of offending Islam, I have been surrounded by police guards and stripped of nearly all personal privacy. I am driven every day from the safe house to my office in the Dutch Parliament building in armored police cars with sirens and flashing blue lights. I wear a bulletproof jacket when I speak in public. Always surrounded by plainclothes police officers, I have not walked the streets on my own in more than seven years... Why do I need this protection? I am not a president or a king; I am a mere member of the Dutch Parliament, one of 150 elected parliamentarians in the Tweede Kamer, the House of Representatives of the Netherlands, a small country of 16.5 million in Western Europe. However, I have joined Westergaard in a rapidly growing group of individuals throughout the world who have been marked for death for criticizing Islam. For asserting our rights to say what we really think about this political ideology that disguises itself as a religion, we have been hounded by Muslims seeking to make an example of us. Offend us, they are saying to the world, and you will end up in hiding like Wilders, attacked like Westergaard, or dead like van Gogh."

"The Dutch example shows that when people overcome their fear, David can defeat Goliath."

"In my fight for freedom and against the Islamization of the Netherlands, I will never let anyone silence me. No matter the cost, no matter by whom, whatever the consequences may be."

"Europe's economic greed was instrumentalized by Arab League policy in a long-term political strategy targeting Israel, Europe, and America. […] Through the labyrinth of the EAD system, a policy of Israel's delegitimization was planned at both the EC's national and international levels. […] Strategically, the Euro-Arab Cooperation was a political instrument for anti-Americanism in Europe, whose aim was to separate and weaken the two continents by an incitement to hostility and the permanent denigration of American policy in the Middle East ."

"Les populations européennes [...] furent, des décennies durant, soumises à une idéologie médiatisée démonisant Israël."

"The truth is that for 30 years the Europeans were with the terrorists. They can’t fight the Arabs; they have allowed the Arabs to dictate their policy since 1974."

"Cet engrenage qui fait de l'Europe le nouveau continent de la dhimmitude, s'est mis en marche depuis 30 ans à l'instigation de la France."

"A machinery that has made Europe the new continent of dhimmitude was put into motion more than 30 years ago at the instigation of France."

"Eurabia is a tangible entity [...] Eurabia’s destiny was sealed when it decided, willingly, to become a covert partner with the Arab global jihad against America and Israel."

"Europeans, prisoners of a Eurabian totalitarianism"

"Eurabia represents a geo-political reality [..] Western Europe [...] future is Eurabia. Period. [...] Generations grew up within this political framework; they were educated and conditioned to support it and go along with it."

"L'Europe est devenue le nouveau continent de la dhimmitude, où on ne livre pas bataille parce que l'on s'est déjà soumis sans se battre [...] Eurabia est à la fois un partenariat avec le monde arabo-musulman et une stratégie menée discrètement, en dehors des traités officiels [...] Les Arabes mirent plusieurs conditions à cette association : une politique européenne indépendante de celle de l'Amérique, la reconnaissance par l'Europe d'un État palestinien, le soutien à l'OLP, le retrait d'Israël sur les lignes d'armistice de 1949, la souveraineté arabe sur Jérusalem."

"I don't see a solution."

"Europeans are not reproducing. Soon, the 60-- and 70--year--olds will die. And there are no Europeans to replace them."

"over the last 30 years, Europeans have lived in a culture of hate and lies directed against Israel, which are expressed in the media from morning to night. It is a continual indoctrination of hate, not much different in its deliberate policy and planning from the 1920-40 period."

"it looks as if the EU has adopted the totalitarian mentality of its best friends and allies"

"Europeans have been unwittingly victims during thiry years of constant indoctrination"

"This Euro-Arab synergy contribued to the emergence of a totalitarian subculture."

"For thirty years now, Europeans have been subjected to a permanent campaign of disinformation"

"It is clear that the EU was creating a gigantic machinery involving politics and cuture in order to condition European minds."

"the totalitarian censorship and control of [European] intellectual life are the foremost result of these dialogues."

"In the news Eurabian totalitarian culture, basic freedoms seems to be dispensable."

"Anti-Semitism has become part of Europe's banal political culture."

"il s'agit [...] d'une culture antisémite élaborée à un haut niveau politique, imposée et distillée quotidiennement [...] aux Européens"

"Depuis trente ans, les Européens sont soumis à une campagne de désinformation permanente"

"[a] process of surrender and moral support to jihadist ideology that is rotting Europe [...] I think that it is, precisely, "Palestinianism" which is at the root of Europe's decadence. [...] Europeans are [...] conditioned by Palestinianism to hate America and Israel"

"I think that European anti-Semitism was created by the European states. It is a culture that has been imposed over the European people in order to develop this anti-Israeli cultural and political war. [...] Europe has built its security system on the hate of Israel, on the hate of America and with the alliance with Arab and Jihadist movements and Palestinian movements."

"For 40 years Eurabia has built its networks, its finance, its hegemonous power, its totalitarian control over the media, the universities, the culture and the mind of people."

"la culture antisémite qui est imposée et diffusée par les "élites européennes" politiques contrôlant par les réseaux eurabiens, les universités, les medias, les publications et la culture [...] Les Européens ne se rendent pas compte de l’ampleur de la toile eurabienne qui touche tous les secteurs : politique, économique, culturel, religieux, médiatique, universitaire, tissé depuis quarante ans."

"Indeed, the freedom of expression and thought that has been so crucial for European democracy has disappeared."

"l’insegnamento nelle università, nella cultura, nell’editoria viene controllato in gran parte dalla Anna Lindh Foundation o dalla Alleanza delle civilizzazioni"

"Ceux qui nient Eurabia sont ceux qui y participent. Car Eurabia se passe de démonstration. Elle est là en nous et autour de nous, ce n’est pas la réalité de demain mais celle d’aujourd’hui."

"a Western world which is corroding, which is [...] Decaying. And which doesn't even reproduce itself. [...] The youth don't get married, don't have children."

"Il a inculqué à l’échelle européenne une culture antisémite"

"L’Europe a choisi la soumission dès 1973"

"Nier l’existence d’Eurabia est stupide"

"L’alliance secrète de chefs d’État européens avec le jihadisme palestinien contre Israël représente la pierre angulaire de la politique euro-méditerranéenne de fusion des deux rives de la Méditerranée. […] Elle promeut la soumission, supprime la liberté d’expression par la terreur et enseigne la conception jihadiste palestinienne de l’histoire et de la civilisation."

"Aujourd’hui ceux qui répandent partout des théories conspirationnistes pour dissimuler et soustraire à la connaissance du public les preuves historiques de la naissance et des accords d’Eurabia font eux-mêmes partie des conspirateurs cherchant à étouffer à tout prix la liberté d’expression."

"l’Europe antisémite et islamisée d’aujourd’hui. [...] L’Europe d’aujourd’hui n’est pas le fruit du hasard. Elle fut voulue par les hommes d’États, les ministres, les économistes, les intellectuels des décennies précédentes."

"L’Europe y consacra des milliards d’euros, finançant une campagne de haine mondiale contre l’État hébreu, l’enveloppant d’un apartheid diplomatique soutenu par le jihad des boycotts. Ainsi orchestra-t-elle le retour en Europe de l’antisémitisme surfant sur la haine d’Israël. Aujourd’hui [...] l’Europe s’emploie à remplacer au plus vite Israël par la Palestine afin que cesse le scandale d’un État hébreu souverain dans sa patrie. Aussi ne serai-je pas étonnée de la voir expédier ses bombardiers de l’OTAN couvrir de feu le sol israélien pour y faire naître la Palestine et remplir ses engagements envers le monde arabe."

"[Les] pays [européens], certaines Églises, l’Union européenne sont parmi les plus grands pourvoyeurs d’antisémitisme au niveau mondial."

"Coloro che mi hanno attaccato sono degli antisemiti e degli antieuropei, islamofili favorevoli all’islamizzazione dell’Europa."

"there are three functional similarities between the two texts [the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis] that supersede these differences in format and intention. [...] Both texts racialize their target population into a unified, coherent and recognizable pack, instinctively acting in unison, and thus sharing fundamental racial characteristics. [...] In both conspiracy theories, supernatural powers are attributed to the targeted population [...] But one of the most striking parallels between the two theories is that the conspiracy is enabled by a European fifth column. [...] one could find other similarities, such as the financial power of the enemy. There is a remarkable parallel between the unlimited resources of Jewish finance, as assumed in The Protocols, and the Arab League’s equally unlimited stock of petrodollars, as is assumed in Eurabia"

"The West inclines to exclusivism, the East to syncretism. The view that salvation is only possible within the visible Church – a view expressly rejected by the Catholic Church – has been sustained by missionaries and eminent theologians even today; such blindness for the spiritual riches of the East, for its mystical depth and intuition of the transparence of the cosmos to higher Realities, such blindness always implies a blindness for some basic aspects of Christianity itself. The East is tempted by the opposite extreme, syncretism; it consists in wrongly equating biblical values with Eastern religious categories. Such universalism is undoubtedly more tolerant, less violent than Western Exclusivism, but equally blind to the specific inner visage of Christianity and other biblical spiritualities."

"Simply because scientific thought realized a spectacular breakthrough in the West, people speak of "rational Western" and "non-rational Eastern", as if great strides in scientific thought (even in material sciences) had not been made in India and China, as if the sobre scientific approach was not far more developed in Eastern spiritual methods, and as if the dominant religion of the West were not intrinsically irrational in its basic assumptions."

"Following such fractured leadership, Europe’s oldest dividing line, roughly east and west of the Elbe/Danube, is re-emerging. The nations to its east are drifting away from the liberal values entrenched in half a century of union, and are moving in the direction of nationalism and autocracy. Relations with Putin’s Russia have reverted to the belligerence and rhetoric of the cold war. It seems Europe never learns."

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!"

"Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.""

"Whoever has done or willed too much, let him drink from this deep cup a long draught of life and youth … Everything is narrow in the West—Greece is small and I stifle; Judea is dry and I pant. Let me look a toward lofty Asia, the profound East for a little while. There lies my great poem. [The Ramayana] as vast as the Indian Ocean, blessed, gilded with the sun, the book of divine harmony wherein is no dissonance. A serene peace reigns there, and in the midst of conflict an infinite sweetness, a boundless fraternity, which spreads over all living things, an ocean without bottom or bound, of love, of pity, of clemency."

"Characteristic of the Semitic religions are features such as a historically attested teacher or prophet, a sacred book, a geographically identifiable location for its beginnings, an ecclesiastical infrastructure and the conversion of large numbers of people to the religion-all characteristics which are largely irrelevant to the various manifestations of Hinduism until recent times. Thus instead of emphasizing the fact that the religious experience of Indian civilization and of religious sects which are bunched together under the label of ‘Hindu’ are distinctively different from that of the Semitic, attempts are being made to find parallels with the Semitic religions as if these parallels are necessary to the future of Hinduism. (…)"

"The dharmic traditions do not transmit knowledge, values and experience by cultivating a collective and absolute historical identity in the Judeo-Christian sense. Instead, the aspirant is free to start afresh and tap into his potential for discovering the ultimate reality in the here and now. .... The Abrahamic traditions tend to focus outward; the dharmic ones, inward. The difference between observing historical mandates and discovering the structures of consciousness is stark. ... The history-centric worldview results in synthetic unity, not integral unity."

"...that the gods determined that the place where a man who makes a sacrifice is to be found is the east. Such a man, the text says directly, is in the east, but verse 4 says that in the west is a miser who lets nothing come of it and a rich man who gives no gifts. ... "In the west are the ill-wishers whose horses are badly harnessed; in the east are those who are here for giving, who give a variety of gifts," i.e. the misers who have given bad horses are to be in the extreme west, the region of the sunset, thus of darkness and therefore of raksas, while the generous are to be in the east, the region of the sunrise, thus in the eternal light, which is what 10, 107,2 says. So 7,6,3 is to be translated quite literally: "He (Agni), the Eastern One, has made those who do not make sacrifices into Westerners," i.e. he, the bright one, has plunged them into deep darkness."

"The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies -- West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam -- it is the democratic countries what are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving."

"India seen as a mirror image of the West appears otherworldly, fatalistic, non-egalitarian. It is as though we would be less ourselves, less this-worldly, masterful, egalitarian and individualistic if Indians were less what they are."

"And East and West, without a breath, Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, To broaden into boundless day."

"… The deepest opposition [between the West and India] rests on the fact that the fundamental evidence of the West, whether Christian or atheist, is death, whatever meaning the West gives to it, whereas India’s fundamental evidence is the infinite of life in the infinite of time: “Who could kill immortality?”"

"Indo-European research has, in many ways, been an attempt to write the origin narrative of the bourgeois class — a narrative that, by talking about how things originally were, has sanctioned a certain kind of behavior, idealized a certain type of person, and affirmed certain feelings. Certainly, there have been some scholars who have not identified themselves with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, but they are few."

"[T]here is no direct evidence for the culture of the Indo-Europeans, with the result that researchers have used their imagination to a very high degree. It is only with the help of methodologically problematic linguistic and archaeological theories that they have been able to chisel an Indo-European culture into being."

"These prehistoric peoples have preoccupied people in modern times primarily because they were, to use the words of Claude Lévi-Strauss, “good to think with," rather than because they were meaningful historical actors."

"The discourse about the Indo-Europeans was also dependent on the most powerful movement of the nineteenth century, imperialism. To an even greater extent than concerned the view of Semites, racism was present in the scholars' depictions of how the Indo-European colonizers in ancient times conquered a dark, primitive original population. The Indo-Europeans were presented as humanity's cultural heroes, who, undefeated throughout history, spread knowledge and ruled over lower peoples, and who therefore seemed predestined to remain rulers even in the future."

"The scholarship about the Indo-Europeans, their culture, and their religion has been an attempt to create new categories of thought, new identities, and thereby a future different from the one that seemed to be prescribed."

"It is important to realize, however, that the exaltation of the Indo-Europeans or the Aryans—especially during the nineteenth century, but also later, for example, for the socialist Gordon Childe—was a song of praise for the modern citizen with a scientific outlook, liberal values, and humanistic ideals. In the nineteenth century, the Indo-Europeans were mainly models for a progressive bourgeois ideology, and the attacks on Jewish and Semitic religiosity (which sometimes included Christianity) aimed to form a worldview that fitted modern society and was not necessarily connected to any racial ideology."

"'Germanism' arose amidst the peculiar political condition of nineteenth century Germany. . . . it has become the political shibboleth of the occidental nations."

"Among the Western scholars who take part today in the debates on the Indo-Europeans, I know some whose erudition is not enough to compensate for the falsity of mind and others whose outdated erudition serves to perpetuate theses the lightness or impossibility of which they have been shown a hundred times."

"Skepticism in scholarly circles grew rapidly after 1880. The obvious impossibility of actually locating the Aryan homeland; the increasing complexity of the problem with every addition to our knowledge of prehistoric cultures; the even more remote possibility of ever learning anything conclusive regarding the traits of the mythical "original Aryans"; the increasing realization that all the historical peoples were much mixed in blood and that the role of a particular race in a great melange of races, though easy to exaggerate, is impossible to determine, the ridiculous and humiliating spectacle of eminent scholars subordinating their interests in truth to the inflation of racial and national pride—all these and many other reasons led scholars to declare either that the Aryan doctrine was a figment of the professional imagination or that it was incapable of clarification because the crucial evidence was lost, apparently forever."

"We should not be misled by this into thinking that these scholars were anti-racist. They did not have to rely on a theory of race as such, for they had their own global theory that was fully able to inferiorize the languages (and by implication the cultures) of the other purely on linguistic grounds. Max Müller's linguistic taxonomy was a Hegelian hierarchy in which . . . cultural geography [becomes] the same as world history."

"The difficulties besetting the larger IE issue are due, I think, to the fact that linguists continue to arrogate to themselves the competence of these other disciplines. Just as experts from other sciences do not intervene in linguistics, so linguists should not tell historians, archaeologists et al what to do or how to do it just because the latter’s finds are at variance with linguistic wishes."

"To be sure, neither Jones nor anyone else was wrong to perceive strong and systematic similarities among Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, and the rest. The question is what one makes of these similarities, and one steps onto a slippery slope whenever analysis moves from the descriptive to the historic plane of linguistics. In specific, reconstructing a "protolanguage" is an exercise that invites one to imagine speakers of that protolanguage, a community of such people, then a place for that community, a time in history, distinguishing characteristics, and a set of contrastive relations with other protocommunities where other protolanguages were spoken. For all of this, need it be said, there is no sound evidentiary warrant."

"Indo-European: a term borrowed from comparative linguistics and most usually used to designate the blond North-European race (Homo europaeus), but which may provoke confusion since in most of these regions, originally settled by the North-Europeans, race and language have not overlapped for some time due to the bastardization (Bastardierung) of the Northern European speakers of Indo-European languages."

"The westward expansion of the Kurgan culture has been mapped with some degree of accuracy: “If an archaeologist is set the problem of examining the archaeological record for a cultural horizon that is both suitably early and of reasonable uniformity to postulate as the common prehistoric ancestor of the later Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, and possibly some of the Indo-European languages of Italy, then the history of research indicates that the candidate will normally be the Corded Ware culture. At about 3200-2300 BC this Corded Ware horizon is sufficiently early to predate the emergence of any of the specific proto-languages. In addition, it is universally accepted as the common component if not the very basis of the later Bronze Age cultures that are specifically identified with the different proto-languages. Furthermore, its geographical distribution from Holland and Switzerland on the west across northern and central Europe to the upper Volga and middle Dniepr encompasses all those areas which [have been] assigned as the “homelands” of these European proto-languages.”"

"The classification "the Indo-European branch of humanity" could be defined either as the group of people who spoke some Indo-European language (Latin, Sanskrit, French, Swedish, Persian, and so forth) or as the group of Aryans, who were typically imagined as tall, blond, and blue-eyed specimens of homo sapiens."

"Our knowledge of these migrations [that broke PIE unity] is very limited. On a linguistic basis, little can be said about them."

"The role of the Indo-European peoples in the ancient world has been portrayed too often as the incarnation of northern virility sweeping down in massed chariots to bring new vigour to a decadent south."

"In the current state of knowledge, none of the hypotheses forwarded can be seriously demonstrated... There is in fact no evidence for the gradual progression of an entire material culture from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Atlantic or the Ganges—unless, of course, we drastically force the data."

"It is presumptuous to say the least to claim that the migratory routes traveled by the Indo-Europeans from their original Homeland have now been clearly traced."

"We do not find any evidence for the diffusion of the entire material culture of the steppes to those regions where historically attested Indo-European languages were spoken"

"The biological situation among the speakers of modern Indo-European languages can only be explained through a transfer of languages like a baton, as it were, in a relay race, but not by several thousand miles’ migration of the tribes themselves."

"But in the period 3100-2900 BC came a clear and dramatic infusion of Yamna [= Pontic] cultural practice, including burials, into Eastern Hungary and along the lower Danube. With this we are able to witness the beginnings of the Indo-Europeanization of Europe."

"The archaeological correlates become some sort of labels or tags that one may employ in order to trace the supposed Indo-European populations. But, in fact, very little of the illustrative archaeological material actually exhibits specific Indo-European or Indo-Iranian traits; a question therefore arises: what is the relevance of archaeological material if any sort of assemblage present at the expected or supposed time/space spot can function as the tag of a linguistic group?"

"What does this prove? That proto-Indo-Iranian broke away before proto-Anatolian, since the latter family has the PIE term for lion and wine while the former did not? Or does it prove my Leophobic Secondary Pontic Steppe-Anatolian Sequential Dispersion theory, according to which, Anatolian speakers broke away from PIE due to the sheer monotonous boredom of the Steppes and moved through the Balkans to Anatolia, where they encountered lions (note that Luwian includes the root for ‘lion’). When the rump of PIE subsequently broke up because even the excitement of a slow moving, non-steerable cart was no match for the tedium of the Steppes, the non-drinking, killjoy proto-Indo-Iranians went east into the deserts of Central Asia and only lightened up after they discovered soma, while the remainder of PIE went on vacation to Anatolia to visit their long-lost relatives who introduced them to lions, albeit with this proving such a traumatic experience that they immediately fled to Europe and never went back. You may consider the above to be unsubstantiated ‘just-so’ balderdash, and you would be welcome to think so, but I would point out that it is no more simple-minded than the following: “they might have moved several times, perhaps by sea, from the Western Pontic steppes to south-eastern Europe to western Anatolia to Greece, making their trail hard to find”, which constitutes Anthony’s own double hand-waving non-explanation of how Greek spread from the ‘wrong’ side of the Pontic Steppes to Greece. Once you adopt his ‘se non è vero è ben trovato’ standard of empirical evidence based on duff linguistic archaeology you can argue for just about anything."

"Although the Brahmans of India belong to the same family, the Aryan or Indo-European family, which civilized the whole of Europe, the two great branches of that primitive race were kept asunder for centuries after their first separation. The mainstream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the northwest. No historian can tell us by what impulse those adventurous Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans, Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks."

"Europeans today are a mixture of three very different ancestral populations: hunter-gatherers, first farmers, and a population with eastern affinities that was not yet present in Europe at the time of the first farmers. It was unclear when and how this eastern component arrived in Europe... ‘When we first looked at the new data, it was a Eureka moment’ ... ‘The eastern ancestry was present in every single sample starting at around 4,500 years ago, and absent in every single one before that time.’"

"The fact is that in Europe, faced with the choice between human rights and gas, many politicians pick gas."

"Such suffering from hunger grew up around these cities that the Christians, in the face of the scarcity about which you have heard, did not fear to eat – wicked to say, much less to do – the bodies, cooked in fire, not only of the Saracens or Turks they had killed, but also of the dogs that they had caught."

"About Perth, there was a countrie Sae waste, that wonder wes to see; For intill well-great space thereby, Wes nother house left, nor herb'ry. Of deer there was then sic foison That they wold near come to the town. Sae great default was near that stead That many were in hunger dead. A carle they said was near ther by, That wold set settis commonly, Children and women for to slay, And swains that he might over-ta: And ate them all that he get might: Chrysten Cleek till name be hight. That sa'ry life continued he, While waste but folk was the countrie."

"A collective insanity seemed to have seized the nation and turned them into something worse than beasts. The princess de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's intimate friend, was literally torn to pieces; her head, breasts, and pudenda were paraded on pikes before the windows of the Temple, where the royal family was imprisoned, while a man boasted drunkenly at a cafe that he had eaten the princess' heart, which he probably had."

"Excavations in the Chancelade quarries, where it will be remembered a landslip occurred last October burying a number of workmen, have been earned on ever since for the purpose of unearthing the bodies. For many days after the slip was believed to have been smothered, the workers smoke was seen to issue from the ruins. Soldiers and quarrymen, directed by a party of engineers, worked day and night in hopes of taking the men out alive. Ever since the work has proceeded, but of late the endeavors were not so vigorously plied. The diggers have now reached the actual spot where the men were engaged at the time of the accident, and on penetrating into a gallery cut in the stone the explorers discovered the body of a young man lying on the ground. Photographs taken of the position show that a dreadful state of affairs must have come about when the men uncrushed found themselves entombed. It appears undoubted that some of the men tried to prolong their lives by killing and eating their companions in misfortune. A few solitary arms and limbs have been picked up in their prison, and everything points to the fact that cannibalism was resorted to. The young man whose body was unmutilated seems to have survived the others, and to have died of hunger."

"Hunger turned some people into cannibals. This was a much more common phenomenon than historians have previously assumed. In the Bashkir region and on the steppelands around Pugachev and Buzuluk, where the famine crisis was at its worst, thousands of cases were reported. It is also clear that most of the cannibalism went unreported. One man, convicted of eating several children, confessed for example: "In our village everyone eats human flesh but they hide it. There are several cafeterias in the village – and all of them serve up young children." ... People ate their own relatives – often their young children, who were usually the first to die and whose flesh was particularly sweet... Hunting and killing people for their flesh was also a common phenomenon. In the town of Pugachev it was dangerous for children to go out after dark since there were known to be bands of cannibals and traders who killed them to eat or sell their tender flesh."

"It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The [rump] steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The [loin] roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable."

"My passion is so great. I want to eat her. If I do she will be mine forever. There is no escape from this desire."

"While the first half of the 3rd millennium BC in Thrace is characterised by a (comparatively) moderate level of social and economic complexity and the ideological dominance of pastoral tribes of a north-Pontic origin, there is a real explosion in complexity in the period between 2400 and 2000 BC and the region becomes increasingly included within a much wider network that is now dominated by frequent and highly visible exchange and trade, and new forms of prestige and status expression."

"“The same conclusion of the existence of foreigners is also indicated by the use of many exotic and prestigious objects, often made of silver. This metal was not readily available in EBA Thrace. We can also note that tin-bronzes may have arrived into this region via Anatolia rather than Europe […] and it is difficult to imagine how such a quantity and quality, and the imaginations and customs behind these, can be transferred to Europe without having individuals or groups of people carrying them, and the infrastructure to organise their transport and wider distribution” “There can be no doubt that the driving force behind this influx of goods and people is enhanced exchange and organised trade, and it is in no way an accident that concurrently the largest exchange network the world had seen up until then arrived at its peak. This network was centred in southern Mesopotamia, a region that had been fully urbanised for at least a millennium, and it stretched from as far away as western India on one side to southeast Europe on the other, and it also incorporated large parts of Central Asia”"