Central Europe Quotes

Whether we can somehow listen in on tree talk is a subject that was recently addressed in the specialized literature. Korean scientists have been tracking older women as they walk through forests and urban areas. The result? When the women were walking in the forest, their blood pressure, their lung capacity, and the elasticity of their arteries improved, whereas an excursion into town showed none of these changes. It's possible that phytoncides have a beneficial effect on our immune systems as well as the trees' health, because they kill germs. Personally, however, I think the swirling cocktail of tree talk is the reason we enjoy being out in the forest so much. At least when we are out in undisturbed forests.

Walkers who visit one of the ancient deciduous preserves in the forest I manage always report that their heart feels lighter and they feel right at home. If they walk instead through coniferous forests, which in Central Europe are mostly planted and are, therefore, more fragile, artificial places, they don't experience such feelings. Possibly it's because in ancient beech forests, fewer "alarm calls" go out, and therefore, most messages exchanged between trees are contented ones, and these messages reach our brains as well, via our noses. I am convinced that we intuitively register the forest's health. ~ Peter Wohlleben

Czech Republic is an important part of central Europe. It's clear that we must participate in European integration. I am convinced that the Czech Republic - or, in the past, Czechoslovakia - would have been one of the founding members of the EU if it hadn't been for the communist takeover in 1948. ~ Vaclav Klaus

We had taken him for a Norwegian ship's captain and had come to his table to hear some more about seafaring, not about philosophy, from which, indeed, we had fled north from Central Europe. ~ Thomas Bernhard

Islam invaded Europe twice from the Mediterranean - first in Iberia, the second time in southeastern Europe, as well as nibbling at Sicily and elsewhere. Christianity invaded Islam multiple times, the first time in the Crusades and in the battle to expel the Muslims from Iberia. Then it forced the Turks back from central Europe. The Christians finally crossed the Mediterranean in the 19th century, taking control of large parts of North Africa. Each of these two religions wanted to dominate the other. Each seemed close to its goal. Neither was successful. What remains true is that Islam and Christianity were obsessed with each other from the first encounter. Like Rome and Egypt they traded with each other and made war on each other. ~ George Friedman

Nothing in our lifetimes has been more heartening than when people of the former Soviet Union and Central Europe broke the grip of communism. We have aided their progress and I am proud of it. ~ William J. Clinton

Logically, when Maestro Gott some years ago, after an especially cruel critic had compared him to "a zombie who causes acute depression to innocent radio listeners", decided to stop performing in protest, the situation was considered so grave that the Minister of Culture himself went to console the deeply insulted star. ~ Terje B. Englund

Russia will occupy most of the good food lands of central Europe while we have the industrial portions. We must find some way of persuading Russia to play ball. ~ Henry L. Stimson

The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service. ~ Laura Riding

Only in America could a refugee girl from Central Europe become secretary of state. ~ Madeleine Albright

According to Melissa Mailey, we now live in a world where kings and noblemen rule the roost. And they've turned all of central Europe - our home, now, ours and our children's to come - into a raging inferno. We are surrounded by a Ring of Fire. Well, I've fought forest fires before. So have lots of other men in this room. The best way to fight [such] a fire is to start a counterfire. So my position is simple. I say we start the American Revolution - a hundred and fifty years ahead of schedule! ~ Michael Stearns

Romania was an original mix: a population that looked Italian but wore the expressions of Russian peasants; an architectural backdrop that often evoked France and Central Europe; and service and physical conditions that resembled those in Africa. ~ Robert D. Kaplan

Responding to the claim that not just reading but "high culture" in general is morally improving, Terry Eagleton points out that, during World War II, "many people were indeed deep in high culture, but . . . this had not prevented some of them from engaging in such activities as superintending the murder of Jews in central Europe." If reading really was supposed to "make you a better person," then "when the Allied troops moved into the concentration camps . . . to arrest commandants who had whiled away their leisure hours with a volume of Goethe, it appeared that someone had some explaining to do."

So nothing about reading, or listening to Mozart sonatas, or viewing paintings by Raphael necessarily transforms or even improves someone's character. As the eighteenth-century scientist G. C. Lichtenberg once wrote, "A book is like a mirror: if an ass looks in, you can't expect an apostle to look out." Nevertheless, I am going to argue . . . that if you really want to become a better person, there are ways in which reading can help. But the degree to which that happens will depend not just on what you read . . . but also why and how. ~ Alan Jacobs

Scientists have always thought that because mammoths roamed such a huge territory - from Western Europe to Central North America - that North American woolly mammoths were a sideshow of no particular significance to the evolution of the species. ~ Hendrik Poinar

Why do people put off travel until retirement? What are they saving it for? I understand that people want to be financially secure first, and pay off pension plans, but why consign the most active years of your life to drudgery? Why would you sacrifice today's freedom for a future that will always remain uncertain, no matter how carefully you plan for it? I'm not saying that everyone sitting in an office right this minute should drop everything and take off for Central Europe. I'm saying that if you want to see the world, plan for it and do it as soon as possible. The experience will give you the inspiration and fortitude you need to survive being a grown up. ~ Jessica Zafra

I've had lots of discussions with my Muslim brothers and sisters who have said to me, "Christianity is a white man's religion" But I'm like, "how is that possible when Christianity went into Africa before it ever went into central Europe?" Even the first people to become a Christian nation were not Romans, they weren't the Byzantines either, they weren't the Greeks ... the first people to claim a Christian empire were the Armenians. ~ Immortal Technique

These are the figures of steel whose eagle eyes dart between whirling propellers to pierce the cloud; who dare the hellish crossing through fields of roaring craters, gripped in the chaos of tank engines ... men relentlessly saturated with the spirit of battle, men whose urgent wanting discharges itself in a single concentrated and determined release of energy.
As I watch them noiselessly slicing alleyways into barbed wire, digging steps to storm outward, synchronizing luminous watches, finding the North by the stars, the recognition flashes: this is the new man. The pioneers of storm, the elect of central Europe. A whole new race, intelligent, strong, men of will ... supple predators straining with energy. They will be architects building on the ruined foundations of the world. ~ Ernst Junger

Indeed, in Central Europe, communism claimed to be the cure for the economic inequalities and other cruelties wrought by bourgeois industrial development, a radical liberal populism of a sort, while in the former Byzantine-Ottoman empire, where there had never been such modern development, communism was simply a destructive force, a second Mongol invasion. ~ Robert D. Kaplan

The early Celts lived in an enormous region, stretching from modern Turkey through eastern and central Europe (including much of modern day Switzerland, Austria, Germany and northern Italy), and westwards and northwards into much of Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Britain and Ireland. ~ Sharon Paice MacLeod

Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: The criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers. ~ Milan Kundera

I am an armor officer. I grew up as a part of the team that helped to field M-1s and M-60-A3s to the army back in 1980s. It's still a magnificent tank, and we designed it for the Cold War and Central Europe. ~ Eric Shinseki

Nothing demonstrates so clearly as the unfolding of our conflict with Russia how essential it is that the Head of a State must be capable of swift, decisive action on his own responsibility, when a war seems to him to be inevitable. In a letter which we found on Stalin's son written by a friend, stands the following phrase : "I hope to be able to see my Anuschka once more before the promenade to Berlin."
If, in accordance with their plan, the Russians had been able to foresee our actions, it is, probable that nothing would have been able to stop their armoured units, for the highly developed road system of central Europe would greatly have favoured their advance. In any case, I take credit for the fact that we succeeded in making the Russians hold off right up to the moment when we launched our attack, and that we did so by entering into agreements which were favourable to their interests. Suppose for example that, when the Russians marched into Rumania, we had not been able to limit their conquests to Bessarabia, they would in one swoop have grabbed all the oilfields of the country, and we should have found ourselves, from the spring of that very year, completely frustrated as regards our supplies of petrol. ~ Adolf Hitler

We stand for the dismantling of foreign military bases. We stand for a reduction of armed forces and armaments in areas where military confrontation is especially dangerous, above all in central Europe. ~ Leonid Brezhnev

If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp. ~ John Maynard Keynes

After a moment, Wrath turned to John. "This is Lassiter, the fallen angel. One of the last times he was here on earth, there was a plague in central Europe-"
"Okay, that was so not my fault-"
"-which wiped out two-thirds of the human population."
"I'd like to remind you that you don't like humans."
"They smell bad when they're dead."
"All you mortal types do. ~ J.R. Ward

In fact if you look at Reagan's global war on terrorism it very quickly turned into a massive terrorist war: [by us] Central America, South Africa, the Middle East, all U.S.-backed terrorism. That's one of the reasons why it disappeared from history and why the standard line is that Bush 43 declared the war on terror. Actually he just repeated what Reagan had said 20 years earlier. ~ Noam Chomsky

I believe Putin is a man of Russia's past, haunted by lost empire, lost glory, and lost power. Putin potentially can serve as president until 2024. As long as he remains in that office, I believe Russia's internal problems will not be addressed. Russia's neighbors will continue to be subject to bullying from Moscow, and while the tensions and threats of the Cold War period will not return, opportunities for Russian cooperation with the United States and Europe will be limited. It's a pity. Russia is a great country too long burdened and held back by autocrats. ~ Robert M. Gates

American banks may have been unable to supply adequate loans, but the Rothschild consortium in Britain was both able and willing. It was during this time that the Rothschilds were consolidating their new industrial holdings in the United States through their agent, August Belmont. Derek Wilson tells us: "They owned or had major shareholdings in Central American ironworks, North American canal construction companies, and a multiplicity of other concerns. They became the major importers of bullion from the newly discovered goldfields". ~ G. Edward Griffin

The equator was wisely put where it is, because if it had been run through Europe all the kings would have tried to grab it. ~ Mark Twain

Reassurances are multiplying in the United States and Western Europe that "the general population" is safe. But "the general population" may be as much a code phrase for whites as it is for heterosexuals. Everyone knows that blacks are getting AIDS in disproportionate numbers, as there is a disproportionate number of blacks in the armed forces and a vastly disproportionate number in prisons. ~ Susan Sontag

The US economy, because it's so energy wasteful, is much less efficient than either the European or Japanese economies. It takes us twice as much energy to produce a unit of GDP as it does in Europe and Japan. So, we're fundamentally less efficient and therefore less competitive, and the sooner we being to tighten up, the better it will be for our economy and society. ~ Hazel Henderson

There already exists the electronic capability for the tracking of individual behavior by centralized networks of surveillance and record-keeping computers. It is highly probable that the conversion to nuclear energy production will provide precisely those basic material conditions most appropriate for using the power of the computer to establish a new and enduring form of despotism. Only by decentralizing our basic mode of energy production - by breaking the cartels that monopolize the present system of energy production and by creating new decentralized forms of energy technology - can we restore the ecological and cultural configuration that led to the emergence of political democracy in Europe. ~ Marvin Harris

It has been suggested by some people in this country that I and my Government will be a 'soft touch' in the Community. In case such a rumour may have reached your ears, Mr Chancellor, it is only fair to advise you frankly to dismiss it, as my colleagues did long ago! I intend to be very discriminating in judging what are British interests and I shall be resolute in defending them. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Creation stories, so central in the religions of the Middle East, play a surprisingly marginal part in Greek myth. The Greeks had nothing to set alongside the resounding 'In the beginning' in the book of Genesis, where one eternal God creates the universe out of nothing. ~ Neil MacGregor

There was, of course, central heating, but it was not apparent. ~ Agatha Christie

And in fact, one of the central reasons why I never got involved with any drugs or anything is that I remember talking to people in maybe 1975 who saw Hendrix but couldn't remember it. I was like, 'How could that be?' ~ Ian MacKaye

In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

Film has become such a central part of our culture now that I think sometimes too great a weight is placed upon it in terms of scrutiny and analysis. There's a lot of rather specious professorial stuff that swirls around films. ~ Daniel Day-Lewis

If he had stayed in Slovenia, and Slovenia had stayed Communist, Zizek would not have been the nuisance he has since become. Indeed, if there were no greater reason to regret the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the release of Zizek on to the world of Western scholarship would perhaps already be a sufficient one. ~ Roger Scruton

Chemical synthesis is uniquely positioned at the heart of chemistry, the central science, and its impact on our lives and society is all pervasive. ~ Elias James Corey

Look around at the countries of Europe, and you'll find that practically all of them have pasts that are just as tragic as Ireland's, yet the people seem able to find some creative way at moving into the future. ~ Jennifer Johnston

To meet the shortage of supplies from America, due to lack of shipping, the representatives of the different supply departments were constantly in search of available material and supplies in Europe. ~ Kelly Miller

You know like it has its own personality, its own character. ~ Marc Newson

Emotional attunement between teachers and learners is highlighted, as well as the central role of storytelling in traditional and contemporary learning. Research has also found that exploration and play, usually consigned to less important after-school activities, are central ~ Louis Cozolino

Yet the Soviet elite, and the Communist regimes through most of eastern Europe (Romania and Serbia were the exceptions), chose not to use even a tiny fraction of this military power. When its members realised that Communism was bankrupt, they renounced force, admitted their failure, packed their suitcases and went home. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The determination of the average man is not merely a matter of speculative curiosity; it may be of the most important service to the science of man and the social system. It ought necessarily to precede every other inquiry into social physics, since it is, as it were, the basis. The average man, indeed, is in a nation what the centre of gravity is in a body; it is by having that central point in view that we arrive at the apprehension of all the phenomena of equilibrium and motion. ~ Adolphe Quetelet

God build's God's kingdom. But God ordered this world in such a way that His own work within that world takes place through the human beings that reflect His image. That is central to the notion of being made in God's image. He has enlisted us to act as His stewards in the project of creation. So the objection about us trying to build God's kingdom by our own efforts, though it seems humble and pious, can actually be a way of hiding from responsibility, of keeping one's head well down when the boss is looking for volunteers. ~ N. T. Wright

The visionless officialized fatuityThat once kept Europe safe for Perpetuity. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central human system of thought. ~ Robert Graves

I can only paint in India. Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse, Braque India belongs only to me. ~ Amrita Sher-Gil

Will the emerging Europe become an active participant in the construction of a new international order, or will it consume itself on its own internal issues? ~ Henry Kissinger

It is impossible now to estimate how much of the intellectual and physical energy of the world was wasted in military preparation and equipment, but it was an enormous proportion. Great Britain spent upon army and navy money and capacity, that directed into the channels of physical culture and education would have made the British the aristocracy of the world. Her rulers could have kept the whole population learning and exercising up to the age of eighteen and made a broad-chested and intelligent man of every Bert Smallways in the islands, had they given the resources they spent in war material to the making of men. Instead of which they waggled flags at him until he was fourteen, incited him to cheer, and then turned him out of school to begin that career of private enterprise we have compactly recorded. France achieved similar imbecilities; Germany was, if possible worse; Russia under the waste and stresses of militarism festered towards bankruptcy and decay. All Europe was producing big guns and countless swarms of little Smallways. ~ H.G. Wells

No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. ~ David Foster Wallace

...the centrality of competitiveness as the key to growth is a recurrent EU motif. Two decades of EC directives on increasing competition in every area, from telecommunications to power generation to collateralizing wholesale funding markets for banks, all bear the same ordoliberal imprint. Similarly, the consistent focus on the periphery states' loss of competitiveness and the need for deep wage and cost reductions therein, while the role of surplus countries in generating the crisis is utterly ignored, speaks to a deeply ordoliberal understanding of economic management. Savers, after all, cannot be sinners. Similarly, the most recent German innovation of a constitutional debt brake (Schuldenbremse) for all EU countries regardless of their business cycles or structural positions, coupled with a new rules-based fiscal treaty as the solution to the crisis, is simply an ever-tighter ordo by another name.

If states have broken the rules, the only possible policy is a diet of strict austerity to bring them back into conformity with the rules, plus automatic sanctions for those who cannot stay within the rules. There are no fallacies of composition, only good and bad policies. And since states, from an ordoliberal viewpoint, cannot be relied upon to provide the necessary austerity because they are prone to capture, we must have rules and an independent monetary authority to ensure that states conform to the ordo imperative; hence, the ECB. Then, and only then, will grow ~ Mark Blyth

Americans who want to perform in Europe face a cultural and vocal uphill battle. We're considered good students, very professional and often technically sound; but though there are droves of us to choose from, a European singer is almost always going to be the first choice of a European company - and often, of an American company as well. ~ Renee Fleming

We can't put up a protectionist dam on our own against the neo-liberal world market either. However, we can try, together with our European partners, to maintain the social character of Europe as much as possible. ~ Johan Huizinga

It was confidently believed that the scientific successes of the industrial revolution could be carried through into the social sciences, particularly with such movements as Marxism. Pseudoscience came with a collection of idealistic nerds who tried to create a tailor-made society, the epitome of which is the central planner. Economics was the most likely candidate for such use of science; you can disguise charlatanism under the weight of equations, and nobody can catch you since there is no such thing as a controlled experiment. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

There are people who haven't faced the reality of what has gone on in Iraq. They still think that the old central state is going to be put back together again. It's not going to happen in Kurdistan. It's not going to happen in the south. It's not going to happen in Baghdad. ~ Peter W. Galbraith

Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that overlooked these differences. ~ Albert Camus

I grew up in Florida in different cities. I was born in Mississippi. My parents moved a lot, so I moved to Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, all through the South. But my family's roots were from central Florida, like Daytona Beach area, so we ended up moving there. ~ Diplo

Consider a more extreme example than the casino experiment. Assume a collection of people play Russian roulette a single time for a million dollars - this is the central story in Fooled by Randomness. About five out of six will make money. If someone used a standard cost-benefit analysis, he would have claimed that one has an 83.33 percent chance of gains, for an "expected" average return per shot of $833,333. But if you keep playing Russian roulette, you will end up in the cemetery. Your expected return is … not computable. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb