Demagoguery and populism are rampant. We are the illegitimate children, the bastards of communism. It shaped our mentality.
ADAM MICHNIKI 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.
More Adam Michnik Quotes
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Sometimes the type of person from the old machine, who is everything but an appealing figure, happens to win an election. But democracy applies to everyone, not just the noble and the clever.
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Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can be elected to the parliament in a democratic election.
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I think you can be an enemy of Saddam Hussein even if Donald Rumsfeld is also an enemy of Saddam Hussein.
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There were free elections in Bulgaria, where the opposition has just won.
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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.
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Politics and ethics belong to different worlds.
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If you’re powerful, you are much more likely to be blind and deaf to signals from outside.
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We lack a political culture, a culture of compromise. We in Poland, as well as the Hungarians, have never learned this sort of thing.
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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.
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America needed our help, and we had to give it.
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Start doing the things you think should be done, and start being what you think society should become.
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The main difference between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution was that the former was mostly the work of Communist party members and others who wanted to bring about ‘socialism with a human face.’
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I can’t remember any text of mine where I said that one should fight Hitler without violence; I’m not an idiot.
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A part of society in our countries would still prefer an authoritarian regime today. These are people with the mentality of Homo sovieticus. But they also exist in France – just think of Le Pen – and even in Finland and Sweden.
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I consider that 9/11 was the day when war was started against my own work and against myself.
ADAM MICHNIK