Pan-European Quotes Collection – Collected by Ellis Jay Farrow

Pan-European Quotes Collection.

“What must change – and has already done so in Europe – is the self-image of nation-states, which must learn to see themselves not so much as independent players but as members of a larger community” – Jürgen Habermas

“Europe, because of its disarray, needs Britain and, as much as this continent can appear miserable, it is certain that Britain could not survive without Europe. The prejudice and indifference that your politicians often nurture towards the continent may perhaps be legitimate, yet they are no less deplorable. Distrust may perhaps be good as method. It is abhorrent as principle: there is always a time when the principle contradicts the fact. Facts say that, for better or worse, Britain and Europe are inseparable. It may very well appear as a mismatched marriage. But as one of our moralists once said: there are good marriages, but no sublime ones. As ours is not sublime, let us make it good, because divorce is impossible.” – Albert Camus, Conference Made in England, 1951. Albert Camus, Complete Works, New Edition Volume III 1949-1956, Library of the Pléiade, No. 548

“The European cannot live unless embarked upon some great unifying enterprise. When this is lacking, he becomes degraded, grows slack, his soul is paralyzed. We have a commencement of this before our eyes today. The groups which up to today have been known as nations arrived about a century ago at their highest point of expansion. Nothing more can be done with them except lead them to a higher evolution. They are now mere past accumulating all around Europe, weighing it down, imprisoning it. With more vital freedom than ever, we feel that we cannot breathe the air within our nations, because it is confined air. What was before a nation open to all the winds of heaven, has turned into something provincial, an enclosing space […]�Nationalism is nothing but a mania, a pretext to escape from the necessity of inventing something new, some great enterprise. Its primitive methods of action and the type of men it exalts reveal abundantly that it is the opposite of a historical creation. Only the determination to construct a great nation from the group of peoples of the Continent would give new life to the pulses of Europe. She would start to believe in herself again, and automatically to make demands on, to discipline, herself.” – Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?

“European unity is no fantasy, but reality itself; and the fantasy is precisely the opposite: the belief that France, Germany, Italy or Spain are substantive & independent realities.” – Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses

“We must build a kind of United States of Europe. In this way only will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living.” – Winston Churchill, Speech to the academic youth in Zurich, 19th September 1946

“Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the fate of the world.” – Charles De Gaulle, 23 November 1959, Strasbourg.

“We have sown a seed of liberty and union that will gradually germinate throughout the earth. Some day, on the model of the United States of America, will be constituted the United States of Europe.” – George Washington

““[There is a] poisoning that now leads the nations of #Europe to delimit and barricade themselves against each other as if it were a matter of quarantine. For that we are too open minded … [we do not] desire the eternalisation of the European system of a lot of petty states …
We are, in one term — and let this be our term of honour — good Europeans, the heirs of Europe …” – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 377

“It is increasingly evident that the Federation of the Peoples of Europe is the vital precondition for the spiritual recovery of the European nations and for the preservation of the civilization and culture of the West. . . . For this and nothing else is the meaning and content of the German Revolution: The resurrection of the West!” – Otto Strasser, The Establishment of Socialism (Prague: Heinrich Grunov, 1936).

“No citizen of Europe could be altogether an exile in any part of it… When a man travelled or resided for health, pleasure, business or necessity, from his country, he never felt himself quite abroad.” – Edmund Burke

“The History of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the beginning.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1831)

“There will be no peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty … The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the necessary prosperity and social development. The European states must constitute themselves into a federation …” – Jean Monnet

“The ocean is rough and whirling, and the currents go to two possible endings: the autocrat, or the United States of Europe.” – Carlo Cattaneo

“The new Europe of solidarity and co-operation among all its people will find rapidly increasing prosperity once national economic boundaries are removed.” – Arthur Seyss-Inquart

“We must now face the difficult task of moving towards a single economy, a single political entity … For the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire we have the opportunity to unite Europe.” – Romano Prodi, Speech to the European Parliament, October 1999

“I believe in political union. I believe in political Europe. I believe in the Europe of integration. I believe in a Europe where we have the economy, culture and the politics brought together.” – Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, 2007

“Today, size matters again. Member states need the collective strength of the European Union to have leverage; otherwise they will be without the power and wealth needed to matter in world politics. Either Europe is a global actor in economic terms and in foreign and defence policy, or each of the member states will struggle to maintain the role that it had in the past century.” – Enrico Letta, Speech at Chatham House, July 2013

“If the liberation of the European people is not accompanied by their unification, the European states will shortly be swallowed up by the growing World powers … Europe, which has almost lost its confidence, expects help from the outside. Some expect it from Russia, others from America. Both aspirations are life threatening for Europe. Neither the West nor the East wants to save Europe, Russia wants to conquer it, America wants to buy it.” – R.N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Pan-Europe (1923)

“So the whole European question culminates in either – or:
War – or peace!
Anarchy – or organisation!
Arms race – or teardown!
Competition – or cooperation!
Collapse – or merger!

No Europeans will be able to dodge this decision. Before making that decision neutrality is treason. Who is not Pan-European – is anti-European! Who does not, sees the dangers to which the fragmented Europe politically opposed to, is blind; but who sees these dangers and still does not doing anything to avert them – is a traitor and criminal to Europe; he sacrifices his convenience or his profit, the future of his children, his nation, his culture; he is complicit in all the disasters that must befall Europe, if he holds on to its present course. The answer to the question of Europe, the future of Europe depends. This answer is in the hands of the Europeans …
If the peoples of Europe want – Pan-Europa will arise: you just need her voice, all candidates and parties to fail, the external program is anti-European. So every European can participate in the demise – or at the resurrection of Europe!” – R.N. Coudenhove Kalergi, Pan-Europa (1923)

“If the ‘Athens Spring’ – when the Greek people courageously rejected the catastrophic austerity conditions of the previous bailouts – has one lesson to teach, it is that Greece will recover only when the European Union makes the transition from ‘We the states’ to ‘We the European people’.” – Yanis Varoufakis

“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.” – Mikhail Bakunin

“I wished to found a European system, a European Code of Laws, a European judiciary: there would be but one people in Europe.” – Napoleon Bonaparte, in Exile on St. Helena

“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.” – Napoleon Bonaparte, Felix Markham, Napoleon (New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1966), 257 as quoted in Matthew Zarzeczny, Napoleon’s European Union: The Grand Empire of the United States of Europe (Kent State University Master’s thesis), 2.

Some suggestion of a European union can be inferred from Immanuel Kant’s 1795 proposal for an “eternal peace congress.” – https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/…/european-integration-kant-philos…/

“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.” – Victor Hugo

Hugo planted a tree in the grounds of his residence on the Island of Guernsey and was noted in saying that when this tree matured the United States of Europe would have come into being. This tree to this day is still growing in the gardens of Maison de Hauteville, St. Peter Port, Guernsey, Victor Hugo’s residence during his exile from France.