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Europe Quotes

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Europe Quotes

“In politics continental Europe was infantile - horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though they were sensual pleasures. This is what Europe offered, or was said to offer.”

Said America Political Enjoy Pleasure Offers Intellectual Europe Capacity Sensual Stability Infantile Continental Sensual Pleasure

Book:It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future

Source: It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future

“The idea that God may be approached and understood through intellectual analysis is uniquely Christian... It is probably not an accident that modern science grew explosively in Christian Europe and left the rest of the world behind.”

World May Ideas Christian Left Behinds Modern Grew Intellectual Understood Europe Accidents Analysis Modern Science

Author:Freeman Dyson

“(A unified) 'Europe' is the result of plans. It is, in fact, a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure: only the scale of the final damage done is in doubt.”

Done Facts Results Destiny Doubt Plans Failure Politician Projects Intellectual Europe Finals Scales Planning Vanity Inevitable Classic Damage Monument Utopia Programmes Utopian Unified

Author:Margaret Thatcher

“Whoever takes it upon himself to write an honest intellectual history of twentieth-century Europe will need a strong stomach. But he will need something more. He will need to overcome his disgust long enough to ponder the roots of this strange and puzzling phenomenon.”

Needs Writing Long Enough Strong Century Honest Strange Intellectual Europe Roots Overcoming Phenomenon Stomach Disgusting Twentieth Century Pondering Puzzling

Author:Mark Lilla

“During the years 1945-1965 (I am referring to Europe), there was a certain way of thinking correctly, a certain style of politicaldiscourse, a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be on familiar terms with Marx, not let one's dreams stray too far from Freud.... These were therequirements that made the strange occupation of writing and speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time acceptable.”

“You never observe a great intellectual movement in Europe in which the Jews do NOT greatly participate. The first Jesuits were Jews.”

Firsts Movement Intellectual Europe Jew Jesuit

Book:Coningsby, etc

Source: Coningsby, etc

“Today, practically every country outside the West is undergoing an intellectual, political, and cultural churning, from China to Bolivia, Egypt to Indonesia, but we haven't really had, after the 1960s, a major oppositional culture in Western Europe and America. The Occupy movement was so startling and welcome partly because it was the first such eruption of mass protests in decades.”

“God is back and Europe as a whole still doesn't get it. It is our biggest single collective cultural and intellectual blind spot.”

Stills Whole Intellectual Europe Blind Spots Collectives Blind Spots

Author:Jonathan Sacks

“This film business, perhaps more so in America than in Europe, has always been about young sexuality. It's not true of theatre, but in America, film audiences are young. It's not an intellectual cinema in America.”

America Film Young Audience Intellectual Europe Sexuality Theatre Cinema

Author:Jacqueline Bisset

“I have in this War a burning private grudge — which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.”

Way Littles War Light Inspiration Spirit Intellectual Europe Mere Soldier Noble Supreme Burning Odd Contribution Grudge Stature Demonic Impetus Odd Things

Author:J. R. R. Tolkien

“In Europe, the Enlightenment of the 18th century was seen as a battle against the desire of the Church to limit intellectual freedom, a battle against the Inquisition, a battle against religious censorship. And the victory of the Enlightenment in Europe was seen as pushing religion away from the center of power. In America, at the same time, the Enlightenment meant coming to a country where people were not going to persecute you by reason of your religion. So it meant a liberation into religion. In Europe, it was liberation out of religion.”

“Without history we are infants. Ask what binds the British Isles more closely to America than to Europe and only history gives a reply. Of all intellectual pursuits, history is the most supremely useful. That is why people crave it and need ever more of it.”

People Needs Giving America Asks History Intellectual Europe British Pursuit Infant Crave Isle

Author:Simon Jenkins

“The peasants have seen the future - Greece and France - and concluded that it does not work. Hence their opposition to Obama's proudly transformational New Foundation agenda. Their logic is impeccable: Only the most blinkered intellectual could be attempting to introduce social democracy to America precisely when the world's foremost exemplar of that model - Europe - is in chaotic meltdown.”

“Of all the potential perils to the new American republic, the prospect of concentrated power . . . troubled the intellectual leaders of the Revolutionary generation. Familiar as the founders were with old Europe . . . they understood why the accumulation of inherited wealth led to inequities and imbalances that inevitably corrupted any system of government.”

Government Political Wealth Leader Generations Intellectual Understood Europe Familiar Revolutionary Republic Founders Peril Accumulation Imbalance Systems Of Government Inherited Wealth

Book:It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush

Source: It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush

“The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind. . . . The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and classical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin.”