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Europe Quotes

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Europe Quotes

“European Union partners never said European Union partners're going to renege on any promises, European Union partners said that European Union partners promises concern a four-year parliamentary term, european Union partners will be spaced out in an optimal way, in a way that is in tune with our bargaining stance in Europe and also with the fiscal position of the Greek state.”

“This is a very special Greek kind of socialist, all the social democratic parties in Europe are against this idea and I think that the dividing line today in the Greek political system is not the centre right or socialist, the real dividing line is between those parties and those political forces who really believe that Greece should stay in the Eurozone and make the efforts and change, and make the reforms and change the old and Mr Tsipras who is really resisting any kind of change in Greece.”

“The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilization, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people.”

“We all have to accept accusations that we ignored the refugee crisis for far too long. The first time that I referred to the Mediterranean Sea as Europe's cemetery was in October 2013, when hundreds of people drowned off Lampedusa. Italians, Maltese, Greeks and Spaniards have been pleading for help for years. But nobody cared.”

“I've had lots of discussions with my Muslim brothers and sisters who have said to me, "Christianity is a white man's religion" But I'm like, "how is that possible when Christianity went into Africa before it ever went into central Europe?" Even the first people to become a Christian nation were not Romans, they weren't the Byzantines either, they weren't the Greeks... the first people to claim a Christian empire were the Armenians.”

“I would describe that [friendship with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras] as a utilitarian friendship. At the time, his country was facing the prospect of leaving the euro zone and many Greeks felt abandoned by Europe. In such a situation, it seemed appropriate to me to present myself as a friend to Greece. It had to do with the country's dignity.”

“Not possessing definite geographical boundaries, at least in the East - its distinction from Asia is problematic, considering that two large countries, Russia and Turkey, stretch between the two continents - , Europe, from the beginning, has defined itself from the perspective of the constitutive specificity of its philosophical principles: the freedom of the Greek cities as opposed to the Asian despotic regimes. Although these principles were often contradicted and reversed into their opposite, the idea of Europe is inseparable from them.”

“[Pope Francis] continued to focus on migrants. He visited the Greek island of Lesbos, which was the front line of the European migrant crisis. And a month later, he accepted a prestigious European Union prize, but he scolded Europe for its treatment of migrants. And in a speech echoing Martin Luther King, he said I have a dream of a Europe where being a migrant is not a crime. So, yeah, he showed he can be quite outspoken on political issues.”

“Political uncertainty around the world has more than doubled since the election of Trump. To find anything comparable we have to go way back, to the late 1920s for example, the times of the Great Depression. Or think of the United Kingdom in the 1970s, when the International Monetary Fund had to help the country out with a dramatic rescue operation. Up until the Greek crisis, that was the last time that the IMF was forced to intervene to such an extent in Europe.”

“I think that the real tragedy of Greece - aside of the savagery of European bureaucracy, Brussels bureaucracy and northern banks, which was really savage - is that the Greek crisis didn't have to erupt. It could have been taken care of pretty easily at the very beginning. But it happened and Syriza came into office with a declared commitment to combat it, and in fact as I recall they actually called a referendum, which horrified Europe.”

“Greece, alone, is in a very vulnerable position. If the Greeks had had support from progressive left and popular forces elsewhere in Europe they might have been able to resist the demands of the Troika, but they had almost no support. Not even from Portugal, Spain, or other left forces. They were left alone.”

“Well, as I said, you know the issue of Greek debt, they've grasped the principle of debt reduction. I think most people would argue that probably more needs to be done on that front, and they've just begun to take the first steps to accepting that there's going to have to be much closer economic integration in Europe.”

“While the business of education in Europe consists in lectures upon the ruins of Palmyra and the antiquities of Herculaneum , or in disputes about Hebrew points, Greek particles, or the accent and quantity of the Roman language, the youth of America will be employed in acquiring those branches of knowledge which increase the conveniences of life.”