Europe

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."