Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Lech Walesa

Quote by Lech Walesa

“He who once became aware of the power of Solidarity and who breathed the air of freedom will not be crushed.”

Quote by Lech Walesa

Author

Lech Walesa
Lech Walesa

Lech Wałęsa (born September 29, 1943) is a Polish statesman, former President of Poland (1990-1995), and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1983). He co-founded the Solidarity trade union movement, leading nonviolent resistance against communist rule. Starting as an electrician at the Gdańsk Shipyard, he organized strikes in 1980 that forced government concessions. His activism culminated in Poland's peaceful transition to democracy in 1989. As president, he oversaw economic reforms and NATO integration. Wałęsa remains a global icon for freedom and human rights. more

You May Also Like

“Some ... have imagined that by arousing a baseless suspicion in the mind of the beloved we can revive a waning devotion. But this experiment is very dangerous. Those who recommend it are confident that so long as resentment is groundless one need only suffer it in silence and all will soon be well. I have observed however that this is by no means the case.”

“Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars; merchants have; let them give them. Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will lend a hand; the children will bring flowers.”

“Is it not manifest that our academic institutions should have a wider scope; that they should not be timid and keep the ruts of the last generation, but that wise men thinking for themselves and heartily seeking the good of mankind, and counting the cost of innovation, should dare to arouse the young to a just and heroic life; that the moral nature should be addressed in the school-room, and children should be treated as the high-born candidates of truth and virtue?”

“A third felicity of age is that it has found expression. The youth suffers not only from ungratified desires, but from powers untried, and from a picture in his mind of a career which has as yet no outward reality. He is tormented with the want of correspondence between things and thoughts.”

“Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,--never darkened across any man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping- coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe a cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies.”

“Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.”