James A. Michener Quotes

This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.

One of the most dangerous moments to world stability will come when some day Russian rule begins to crumble in the eastern European area. The Kremlin may then feel itself seriously threatened internally and may resort to desperate measures

History must give the Poles the principal credit for bringing the Soviet bloc to its knees.

The 1960s were a time of cultural revolution in Poland. And I was a part of that revolution. For me, those years - the late 1950s and early 1960s - were the most fruitful.

For those of us imprisoned in Poland, the Prague Spring was a harbinger of hope.

Moscow had this incredible, intense atmosphere of intrigue and darkness and secrecy.

I got into politics a little bit by chance, as a person from the first generation of the Solidarity movement.

My parents didn't agree with what was going on, you know, with the communists coming in, Fidel Castro. I didn't see the reason why I needed to go back there and be a part of that exhibition.

There's no question that Stalin broke the agreements made at Yalta completely about elections that were supposed to be held immediately in Poland, and Eastern Europe was plunged into slavery as a consequence.

Macau has been steady. The shocking, unexpected government is the one in Washington.

In South America governments are being overthrown all the time. In Canada, nobody is ever overthrown because nobody gives a damn. Also what the Canadian government does doesn’t really matter very much. We’re much more affected by what happens in Washington or Moscow, than what happens in Ottawa.

We were behind the iron curtain at last.

… the unfortunate but inevitable connection between the word “socialism” and the unmitigated crucifixion of Civil Liberties in the East [Eastern Europe dominated by the Russian Communist Party.

Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West. The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute.

Thirty years ago, this promise, this allure of democracy, drove hundreds of thousands of people in East Germany onto the streets. What courage they showed! It was these brave people, these peaceful heroes and heroines, who brought the Wall tumbling down.

Every argument that Margaret Thatcher ever made internationally didn't have a great deal to do with her contempt for Communism - she never really got into that. What she talked about was giving freedom to tens of millions of people in Central and Eastern Europe. She was an inspirational leader when it came to discussing her belief in freedom. More visceral and moral.

The only law we broke was the Brezhnev doctrine that once a country is in the Soviet bloc it cannot be overthrown.

The Democrat Party of the 1980s chose the Soviet Union over Ronald Reagan, in Nicaragua, and in Moscow as well. Now, all of a sudden, they don't like Russia and they don't like the Soviet Union?

I was astonished at the effect my successful landing in France had on the nations of the world. To me, it was like a match lighting a bonfire.

Understand me: I wish to be a man from somewhere, a man among men. You see, a slave, when he passes by, weary and surly, carrying a heavy load, limping along and looking down at his feet, only at his feet to avoid falling down; he is in his town, like a leaf in greenery, like a tree in a forest, argos surrounds him, heavy and warm, full of herself; I want to be that slave, Electra, I want to pull the city around me and to roll myself up in it like a blanket. I will not leave.

Scholars have been arguing for a long time whether the Soviet Union could have been turned into some kind of social democracy. I doubt it myself. I think what Gorbachev didn't quite understand, until it was too late, is that his efforts at change unleashed new, certrifical forces he hadn't counted on. He opened the door a crack and a huge wind blew it open.

I was concerned about a couple of steps that the Russian government took in the last several days. One was reducing the energy supplies to Czechoslovakia.

There are major disappointments with the outcomes of Solidarity: corruption, and major pockets of economic backwardness and even poverty. By and large, though, if there were a choice between the life Poles led in the 1970s and 1980s and now, nobody but a lunatic would say they wanted to have back what they had before.

A successful revolution establishes a new community. A missed revolution makes irrelevant the community that persists. And a compromised revolution tends to shatter the community that was, without an adequate substitute.

So it is the business community and agricultural community who I think might have the most influence on helping us make this effort more bipartisan.