European History Quotes

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.

Thirty centuries of history allow us to look with supreme pity on certain doctrines which are preached beyond the Alps by the descendants of those who were illiterate when Rome had Caesar, Virgil, and Augustus.

My family history, like that of many Polish, German and Jewish families from Central Europe in the 20th century, is complex.

I studied history at university, so I'm always quite fascinated by the Second World War and France. That's one of my interests.

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.

The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V.

Many people in Hungary acted shamefully during World War II.

Redheads were particularly persecuted during the European witch trials of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The colour was associated with the devil, and the pale skin which most redheads have was thought unnatural and deathly.

British Empire

The crisis of the old order in Europe produced nearly 80 years of often bloody conflict between democracy and its foes from 1914 to 1991.

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.

In its history, Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.

In Hitler's launching of the Nazi campaign upon Russia we can already see, after less than six months of fighting, that he made one of the outstanding blunders of history, and the results so far realized constitute an event of cardinal importance in the final decision of the war.

Jewish stinginess and financial wizardry gained them commercial control of Europe and provoked anti-Semitism, which waxed and waned in Europe throughout the ages.

As European history makes painfully clear, a return to aggressive nationalism could be dangerous, not just for the continent but also for the world.

Europe was born with Jean Monnet but then was progressively transformed.

The memory of the Second World War hangs over Europe, an inescapable and irresistible point of reference. Historical parallels are usually misleading and dangerous.

France remembers previous invasions in this century, and no one can blame her for wanting to feel secure. There never was a time, however, when other nations were as ready to see her point of view as they are today.

Soon, nostalgia will be another name for Europe.

Although the pineapple had been widely disseminated for centuries among the native peoples of South and Central America, it didn't figure in European history until 1493.

We licked the race haters in Europe, but the millions of Jewish dead cannot be restored to life

When Barbarossa commences, the world will hold its breath and make no comment.

Without the potato, the balance of European power might never have tilted north.

The Revolution's most important result was Napoleon, whose most important result (as France learned in 1871, and again in 1914, and again in 1940) was the invention of Germany