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Latest comment: 8 years ago by Ningauble in topic Multiple picture/quotes by Michael Totten

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Reaction to European Constitution

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  • "The EU Constitution is something new in human history. Though it is not as eloquent as the French and U.S. constitutions, it is the first governing document of its kind to expand the human franchise to the level of global consciousness. The language throughout the draft constitution speaks of universalism, making it clear that its focus is not a people, or a territory, or a nation, but rather the human race and the planet we inhabit."
  • “[The Constitution] will seal the victory of the nation-states over the European 'super-state'".
  • "The EU Constitution safeguards national sovereignty of Member States."
  • "This is a Constitution … which consecrates the EU as a union of sovereign states, which continues not to opt for federal institutions."
  • "This Constitution does not reflect the thoughts, hopes and aspirations of ordinary people. It does nothing for jobs or economic growth and widens further still the democratic deficit. The gap between the governors and the governed is now a gaping chasm."
  • A consensus [that] has been established … around the British concept of a market system stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals, accompanied by intergovernmental co-operation in areas where collective action is more efficient, and a security policy integrated with that of the USA.
  • Europe is and will be a Union of States.
  • An extraordinary disappointment.
    • Elmar Brok MEP (German federalist), Economist, 31 May 2003
  • I want to kill myself.


Divisions of Europe

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  • You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? It’s the little differences.
  • That grand drama in a hundred acts, which is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe—the most terrible, most questionable and perhaps also the most hopeful of all dramas.
  • I doubt that the evil spirits of the past, under which we in Europe have already suffered more than enough this century, have been banished for ever.

Europe as a declining continent

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  • There is no freedom in Europe — that's certain — it is besides a worn out portion of the globe.
  • I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I must think a little of myself.
  • Positively I sit here, and look at Europe sink, first one deck disappearing, then another, and the whole ship slowly plunging bow-down into the abyss; until the nightmare gets to be howling. The Roman Empire was a trifle to it.
  • The more I live here in western Europe, the more I am impressed by the sense of decay;not the graceful and dignified decay of an oriental, but the vulgar and sordid decay of a bankrupt cotton-mill.
  • The race of prophets is extinct. Europe is becoming set in its ways, slowly embalming itself beneath the wrappings of its borders, its factories, its law-courts and its universities.
  • I have no more patience for this Europe where Autumn wears the face of Spring and Spring reeks of misery.
  • Over there, in Europe, all was shame and anger. Here it was exile or solitude, among these languid and agitated madmen who danced in order to die.

Unification of Europe

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  • That in order to achieve the triumph of liberty, justice and peace in the international relations of Europe, and to render civil war impossible among the various peoples which make up the European family, only a single course lies open: to constitute the United States of Europe
  • The Federated Republic of Europe—the United States of Europe—that is what must be. National autonomy no longer suffices. Economic evolution demands the abolition of national frontiers. If Europe is to remain split into national groups, then Imperialism will recommence its work. Only a Federated Republic of Europe can give peace to the world.
  • If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European.
  • Whatever else may divide us, Europe is our common home; a common fate has linked us through the centuries, and it continues to link us today.
  • We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years.
  • Why should there not be a European group which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this turbulent and mighty continent? And why should it not take its rightful place with other great groupings and help to shape the onward destinies of men?
  • If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the happiness, the prosperity, and the glory which its 300,000,000 or 400,000,000 people would enjoy.
  • My revenge is fraternity! No more frontiers! The Rhine for everyone! Let us be the same Republic, let us be the United States of Europe, let us be the continental federation, let us be European liberty, let us be universal peace!
    • Victor Hugo, Opening Address to the Peace Congress (21 August 1849), Paris.
  • A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood... A day will come when we shall see... the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas.
  • Europe thus divided into nationalities freely formed and free internally, peace between States would have become easier: the United States of Europe would become a possibility.
  • The ocean is rough and whirling, and the currents go to two possible endings: the autocrat, or the United States of Europe'.

Europe and the World

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  • The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.
  • I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.
  • It is a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious evaluation of Europe.
  • Europe cannot confine itself to the cultivation of its own garden.
  • In America the cohesion was a matter of choice and will. But in Europe it was organic.
  • The time to enjoy a European tour is about three weeks after you unpack.
  • Until now when we have started to talk about the uniqueness of America we have almost always ended by comparing ourselves to Europe. Toward her we have felt all the attraction and repulsions of Oedipus.

Politics of Europe

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  • When Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold.

Definitions of Europe by geography or culture

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  • Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.
  • If you live in Europe... things change... but continuity never seems to break. You don't have to throw the past away.
  • Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life’s possibilities.
  • Two principles, according to the Settembrinian cosmogony, were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation issuing in progress. One might call the first the Asiatic, the second the European principle.
  • I know that Europe’s wonderful, yet something seems to lack; The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back.
  • Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear *fucking* weapons.

Multiple picture/quotes by Michael Totten

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Latest comment: 8 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I am uncertain that the quotes from this gentleman deserve quite the emphasis that has been given to them apparently in February by 'Illegitimate Barrister' How do I get this reviewed. Surely quotes by Monnet, Barroso, Juncker are more important - We are aiming for a Federal Europe; We have to lie etc 86.167.195.81 08:36, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

I agree that these captions give undue emphasis to remarks lacking any real quotability. I went ahead and removed them. ~ Ningauble (talk) 12:26, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
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