Jan Peter Balkenende Quotes

In the West, especially after World War II, the government came to be seen as so successful that it could fulfill all the obligations that in less modern societies are fulfilled by the family.

Class struggle: external peace, international solidarity, peace among peoples. This is the sacred slogan of international socialist democracy that liberates nations.

The great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation. Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a world of shared prosperity.

Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe.

What does Burma have to give the United States? We can give you the opportunity to engage with people who are ready and willing to change a society.

Let me reassure that the Kingdom of Cambodia a country with independence, neutrality, peace, freedom, democracy and human rights as you all have seen, shall be existing with no end.

The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits.

It became obvious to me that the generation who changed the world were my parents' generation, and not only in terms of the Second World War, but if you look at all the social legislation of the '60s - abortion, homosexual law reform, equal pay - it wasn't done by my generation; it was done by people who were adults.

After the end of the Cold War, we have the obligation to help these Eastern European countries to enjoy the same kinds of benefits that we enjoyed 50 years ago.

We can have a new vision, one even greater than the system they gave us after World War II. Everyone can pursue happiness and freedom and peace.

Like so many of my generation and those younger, I have spent most of my life in the E.U., and my instincts were naturally for reform from within.

If you had said to anyone in 1945, at the end of the Second World War with the continent it ruins, that you could have a European Union of 28 member states stretching from Portugal in the West to Estonia in the East, all of them more-or-less liberal democracies - they wouldn't have believed you.

Freedom from militarism will give the German people the opportunity, if they will but seize it, to apply their great energies and abilities to the works of peace.

India needs a change - it cannot be ruled by 80-year-olds and by people who have done nothing for it.

In the Second World War, they're talking about the Japanese traitors and putting them into concentration camps. But companies like DuPont had factories in Germany turning out stuff for the German Army.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

The people in East Germany have lived through so many changes in the last 15 years like never before in the country, and they did this often with great enthusiasm. But in the West we also have a high degree of transformations.

If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.

The sooner we put Egypt on the right track, the sooner we would be able to have an Egypt that is modern, that is moderate, and that is acting as a beacon for freedom and liberty across the Arab world.

The United Nations was founded 70 years ago, at the end of World War II. Since that time, Japan has steadfastly walked the path of peace and rebuilt a nation. And, since the mid-1950s onward, we have actively worked to share our experience of development with other nations, especially in Asia.

The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace.

I had seen the films out of World War II, the great 82nd Airborne, the 101st, and all of those of you in the greatest generation and the service that you had provided.

I made 'Saving Private Ryan' for my father. He's the one who filled my head with war stories when I was growing up.

I think it is so great right now that we are in an age where there's an African American president in office. I think it is important for our generation to really witness that.

Lasting peace and security in Iraq and Afghanistan will be achieved when we establish the conditions for democratic, economically viable nations.