“Do you believe in an open society? Then act in the open. Do you believe in a decent and humane society? Then behave decently and humanely.”

I believe that a man can only be useful to his country when he can look at it clearly.

Both men have an authoritarian idea of government; democracy is merely a façade.

I think it’s always dangerous to make political arguments in a religiously ideological way. And it’s very dangerous to treat as traitors to the American nation those who think differently.

The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state.

Even though we are not sure of the links, Iraq was one of the countries that did not lower its flags in mourning on 9/11.

After the French Revolution, it was not the treason of the king that was in question; it was the existence of the king. You have to be very careful when you judge and execute somebody for being a symbol.

I consider that 9/11 was the day when war was started against my own work and against myself.

We lack a political culture, a culture of compromise. We in Poland, as well as the Hungarians, have never learned this sort of thing.

France can never accept that it is no longer a dominating power in the world of culture. This is true both of the French right and the French left. They keep thinking that Americans are primitive cowboys or farmers who do not understand anything.

They want a gradual coup. If Orbán stayed in power in Hungary or if Kaczynski were to win an election in our country, it would be dangerous.

I think you can be an enemy of Saddam Hussein even if Donald Rumsfeld is also an enemy of Saddam Hussein.

This is why we will never again say that Chamberlain is no better than Hitler, Roosevelt no better than Stalin, and Nixon no better than Mao Zedong, even if we do condemn Roosevelt for Yalta, Chamberlain for Munich, and Nixon for Watergate.

I can’t remember any text of mine where I said that one should fight Hitler without violence; I’m not an idiot.

The call to finally clean house is a propaganda tool of the right, which tolerates the leftists who it condemns.

Kaczynski appointed a judge to the position of deputy justice minister who had once sentenced current President Bronislaw Komorowski to a prison term.

After the fall of communism in Poland, we had a post-communist as president for two terms: Aleksander Kwasniewski. He was very good. He brought Poland into NATO and the European Union.