Konstantinos Karamanlis

Greece is plagued by just one single problem: its politics. The misfortune of our people is caused by the unhealthy nature of the political environment and the defective organization of public life.

In the history of all nations, there are instances in which the crisis of institutions and morals becomes so deep that, in order to save democracy, one should remake it.

Konstantinos Karamanlis (8 March 1907 – 23 April 1998) was a Greek politician and a dominant figure in Greek politics. He was the four-time Prime Minister of Greece and two-term president of the Third Hellenic Republic. A towering figure in Greek politics, his political career spanned over seven decades, covering much of the latter half of the 20th century.

Quotes

• Greece belongs to the West.
  • Karamanlis' foreign policy.
  • Clogg, Richard (2013) (in en). A Concise History of Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 176. ISBN 9781107656444. 

• Who governs this country?
  • Constantinos Karamanlis after Grigoris Lambrakis' murder in 1963. In Oriotheteses, Roes publications, 1986

• Hellas has been transformed to an endless bedlam.
  • Alternative translation: A boundless lunatic asylum
  • Constantinos Karamanlis commenting Andreas Papandreou administration during the Koskotas scandal and the political polarisation of the era.
  • Close, David H. (2014) (in en). Greece since 1945: Politics, Economy and Society. London & New York: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781317880011. 

• In democracies, prime ministers do not go to prison. They return home.
  • Karamanlis commenting on the trial's verdict of Andreas Papandreou on Koskotas scandal.
  • Garrard, James, ed (2006) (in en). Scandals in past and contemporary politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 133–134. ISBN 9780719065514. 

• In the history of all nations, there are instances in which the crisis of institutions and morals becomes so deep that, in order to save democracy, one should remake it.
  • Pappas, Takis S. (1998) (in en). Making Party Democracy in Greece. Macmillan Press. p. vi. ISBN 9781349404346. 

• You made me come back on 24 July in order to save the country that was in danger. But if you do not mean to give me the ample majority I need to carry out my mission, then what is the point of having me back?
  • Karamanlis addressing the people of Athens on 15 November 1974, just before the first elections after the fall of the Greek Junta. After his election, he established a new constitution.
  • Pappas, Takis S. (1998) (in en). Making Party Democracy in Greece. Macmillan Press. p. 33. ISBN 9781349404346. 

• Greece is plagued by just one single problem: its politics. The misfortune of our people is caused by the unhealthy nature of the political environment and the defective organization of public life.
  • In a letter that Karamanlis sent from Paris to Constantine Tsatsos in the spring of 1966.
  • Pappas, Takis S. (1998) (in en). Making Party Democracy in Greece. Macmillan Press. p. 35. ISBN 9781349404346. 

• It is our opinion that the misfortunes of our people are mainly due to the imperfect organization and shortcomings of public life [...] The problem is of a political nature [... and it can only be solved with the creation of] a new political force that will become the point of convergence of all progressive and healthy elements of our times [...] a force that will generate a new political and moral ethos.
  • Karamanlis characterizing the state of contemporary politics.
  • Pappas, Takis S. (1998) (in en). Making Party Democracy in Greece. Macmillan Press. pp. 34-35. ISBN 9781349404346. 

• As you know, the functioning of democracy – and especially of parliamentary democracy – presupposes the existence of parties with [long] traditions, steadfast principles, a program, as well as a leadership inspired by a sense of responsibility. Because political parties [...] have the most decisive role in democracies. In point of fact, one can claim that it is political parties rather than governments that peoples attach to; and that a regime’s fortune is more affected by the number and behavior of [its] political parties than by its formal institutional framework.
  • Karamanlis asserted his position to a friend on the role of political parties in (European) parliamentary democracies.
  • Pappas, Takis S. (1998) (in en). Making Party Democracy in Greece. Macmillan Press. p. 35. ISBN 9781349404346. 

• What Right are you talking about? Am I the Right-winger? And who are the Leftists? Wasn’t it I who, as soon as I took over after the Civil War, stopped the executions and opened the prisons and exile camps? Wasn’t it the centrists who made Law 509, all the anti-communist legislation, the political loyalty declarations, the prisons, the exiles, and the executions? I took office just six years after the Civil War ended. And immediately, I found myself in the middle. On one side were my own people, the right-wingers, who wanted us to crush the communists, and on the other side were the communists, who refused to accept their defeat. So, gradually, I released them from prison; I didn’t carry out any executions, and I safeguarded the democracy of that time. So, I am the right-winger, and they are the democrats, who did all these things, which I found ready-made? And didn’t I also legalize the Communist Party after the dictatorship? Didn’t I withdraw from NATO when it was necessary? Didn’t I nationalize the companies of Andreadis, Onassis, and Niarchos? Didn’t I achieve the smooth and bloodless transition from dictatorship to democracy? Didn’t I contribute decisively to the abolition of the monarchy? Didn’t I guarantee the alternation of parties in power? Didn’t I draft the best Constitution Greece ever had? So what are you telling me now about being the leader of the Right? You all need to understand that the time has come to move away from slogans and labels, and for the parties to stop trapping people in rhetoric, in which they then become entangled themselves.
  • Karamanlis interrupted a journalist who described him as a Right-winger on an official trip to India and Australia.
  • Panos Loukakos (3 October 2024). "Konstantinos Karamanlis: "Am I the right-winger? And who are the Leftists?"" (in en). Proto Thema. 

Quotes about

• [He is] a special phenomenon: a man of humble origins, unremarkable intellectual endowment, infuriating obstinacy, but with an impeccable honesty, a statesmanlike flair in big issues and an accurate assessment of the needs and the motivations of his fellow countrymen which few politicians in our age have equalled. In the Greek context he was a Churchill.
  • Takis Pappas provides the above quote from an impartial foreigner who described Karamanlis to avoid any hagiographies by political friends and followers.
  • Pappas, Takis S. (1998) (in en). Making Party Democracy in Greece. Macmillan Press. p. 30. ISBN 9781349404346. 

• Karamanlis or the tanks
  • An implicit slogan and argument, mainly among the Left, for the restoration of democracy after the fall of the Greek Junta.
  • Clogg, Richard (2013) (in en). A Concise History of Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 168. ISBN 9781107656444. 

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Konstantinos Karamanlis on Wikipedia
• Media related to Konstantinos Karamanlis on Wikimedia Commons
• Institute for the Advancement of Democracy, Konstantinos Karamanlis.