Lech Wałęsa quotes

Lech Wałęsa is a Polish politician, trade union leader, and human rights activist, best known as the co-founder of Solidarity. The Solidarity movement played a pivotal role in ending communist rule in Poland and inspired democratic reforms across Eastern Europe. He later served as President of Poland and received the Nobel Peace Prize. Here are 77 of his quotes:

Freedom must be gained step by step, slowly. Freedom is a food which must be carefully administered when people are too hungry for it.

Lech Wałęsa

If once again Germany destabilizes Europe, then Germany will be not be divided again, but wiped off the map. East and West have the necessary technology in order to enforce this verdict. If Germany begins again, there is no other solution.

Lech Wałęsa

Everyone wants a voice in human freedom. There's a fire burning inside all of us.

Lech Wałęsa

I'm lazy. But it's the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they didn't like walking or carrying things.

Lech Wałęsa

I belong to the generation of workers who, born in the villages and hamlets of rural Poland, had the opportunity to acquire education and find employment in industry, becoming in the course conscious of their rights and importance in society.

Lech Wałęsa

The sole and basic source of our strength is the solidarity of workers, peasants and the intelligentsia, the solidarity of the nation, the solidarity of people who seek to live in dignity, truth, and in harmony with their conscience.

Lech Wałęsa

I most sincerely wish that the world in which we live be free from the threat of a nuclear holocaust and from the ruinous arms race. It is my cherished desire that peace be not separated from freedom which is the right of every nation. This I desire and for this I pray.

Lech Wałęsa

One could say I was goofy somewhere, and maybe even outed someone, but not that I was an agent. Not that I wanted to betray anybody. (...) I swear, and damn me if I lie.

Lech Wałęsa

I am for, and even against.

Lech Wałęsa

I turned around by 360 degrees.

Lech Wałęsa

Positive pluses and negative pluses.

Lech Wałęsa

I am convinced that Germany has drawn conclusions [from World War II] and Europe has drawn conclusions as well. And I can say an unpopular thing. If once again Germany should risk destabilizing Europe, then there would be no division of Germany - it would simply be blown off the map of Europe. With the kind of technology that exists, with the kind of experiences we have had, there can be no other way - and the Germans know it.

Lech Wałęsa

He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed.

Lech Wałęsa

The fall of the Berlin Wall makes for nice pictures. But it all started in the shipyards.

Lech Wałęsa

The defense of our rights and our dignity, as well as efforts never to let ourselves to be overcome by the feeling of hatred - this is the road we have chosen.

Lech Wałęsa

The hope of the nation which throughout the nineteenth century had not for a moment reconciled itself with the loss of independence, and fighting for its own freedom, fought at the same time for the freedom of other nations.

Lech Wałęsa

The program of our movement stems from the fundamental moral laws and order.

Lech Wałęsa

I realize that the strivings of the Polish people gave rise, and still do so, to the feelings of understanding and solidarity all over the world.

Lech Wałęsa

Our firm conviction that ours is a just cause and that we must find a peaceful way to attain our goals gave us the strength and the awareness of the limits beyond which we must not go.

Lech Wałęsa

Let the veil of silence fall presently over what happened afterwards. Silence, too, can speak out.

Lech Wałęsa

My country is in the grips of a major economic crisis. This is causing dramatic consequences for the very existence of Polish families. A permanent economic crisis in Poland may also have serious repercussions for Europe. Thus, Poland ought to be helped and deserves help.

Lech Wałęsa

My most ardent desire is that my country will recapture its historic opportunity for a peaceful evolution and that Poland will prove to the world that even the most complex situations can be solved by a dialogue and not by force.

Lech Wałęsa