Lech Walesa Quotes

We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless.

The world needs leaders of vision instead of leaders on television.

We respect the dignity and the rights of every man and every nation. The path to a brighter future of the world leads through honest reconciliation of the conflicting interests and not through hatred and bloodshed. To follow that path means to enhance the moral power of the all-embracing idea of human solidarity.

Power is only important as an instrument for service to the powerless.

Words are plentiful; deeds are precious.

It is hardly possible to build anything if frustration, bitterness and a mood of helplessness prevail.

The United States is only one superpower. Today they lead the world. Nobody has doubts about it. Militarily. They also lead economically but they're getting weak. But they don't lead morally and politically anymore. The world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States. Today, we lost that hope.

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.

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.

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

Deep faith eliminates fear.

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.

Communism prevents organizations from developing by stopping the flow of information. The system is based on police and listening devices and triggers the worst characteristics in humans.

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

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

Freedom may be the soul of humanity, but often you have to struggle to prove it.

He who once became aware of the power of Solidarity and who breathed the air of freedom will not be crushed.

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

I only fear God, and my wife - sometimes.

Communists are great capitalists, so there is no threat anymore.

It is not difficult to censor foreign news. What is difficult today is to censor one's own thoughts, To sit by and see the blind man On the sightless horse, riding into the bottomless abyss.

We must be courageous but also reasonable. The world admires us for walking a tightrope without falling off. It asks us to keep our balance.

Obviously people want social calm, but if you do not let clever and ingenious people to participate, obviously there must be some dormant volcano that will erupt, sooner or later.

Communism is a monopolistic system, economically and politically. The system suppresses individual initiative, and the 21st century is all about individualism and freedom. The development of technology supported these directions.

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.