European Perspective Quotes

As a European from a different, younger generation, the trauma that was Nixon's presidency never really had a hold over me. For one thing, I never voted for him.

To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that, in Europe, we're probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.

If you ask the people in Europe who won World War II, they don't say the Allies; they say the United States won the war and saved the world.

Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.

This was absolutely an attack on [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair, principally, and the perspective which is really predominant in Europe right now that he's not questioning enough of Mr. Bush's policies.

Movement of people is taking place on an immense scale, and from a European perspective, the number of potential future immigrants seems limitless.

Most Europeans have no idea how wild life can be in north America.

As the Persians wrote very little about how they ran their affairs, the Greek propaganda of the 5th century B.C. has for centuries gone virtually unchallenged - indeed, for Edward Said, it was the beginning of Europe's long habit of misunderstanding and ill-informed contempt of the Middle East.

I needed to join the Navy. If you ask the people in Europe who won World War II, they don't say the Allies, they say the United States won the war and saved the world.

There is a structural difference between the way that Europe views Israel, and America views Israel. The European view is informed by the importance of colonialism in Europe's past. So for Europeans we are like Belgiums in the Congo, or the French in Alger, or the British in India. Strange interlopers in somebody else's land. But in fact, we [Israeli] have been here for 4,000 years. This is our ancestral homeland.

I always was fascinated with China, because I was born in Europe, and for us, China had this fascination and mystery. The first time I came here was in 1989. They were on bicycles, and the speed of the growth has been incredible.

Cultural differences - they are definitely vast in some ways. But I think that Europeans in general have a more global view of the world because they are in such proximity to other countries that it enables them to travel and see other parts of the world.

There are two factors in American politics that may seem strange to Europeans: race and religion.

Trump knows that he is encountering a complete lack of understanding in Europe, but it's apparent that he's not very impressed by it. My experience, however, has been that American presidents take a greater interest in Europe over the course of their term.

America is a magical place, and I think my job, or the job of a lot of us European filmmakers is to just hold up America to Americans and present it to you in a new way. All I wanted to do is in a funny way say, "Look at your country. It's magnificent."

I would advocate that chocolate be covered by health insurance, but that is admittedly a very French public policy perspective.

. . . it is difficult for Europeans to appreciate the sentiment. Other nations kill animals by wholesale and kill one another; they exist in a sea of blood. A European said that the reason why in India animals were not killed was because it was supposed that they contained the spirits of ancestors. This reason was worthy of a savage nation who are not many steps from the brute.

Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.

In Europe they understand that the arts are incredibly important both culturally and economically.

In general, Europeans need to get a wider perspective on the problem of Islamism. Even if the Israel-Palestine question were solved - and I think and hope that one day soon it will be - this wouldn't stop one person from becoming a terrorist.

Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we [Europeans] shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.

Trump is a partner for us who cannot be easily categorized. Putting it in the noblest way possible, his understanding of politics is a little different from ours here in Europe. The way he acts forces us Europeans to take on a new responsibility. We are not standing with our backs up against the wall, but, to put it as pithily as the German chancellor has: We can no longer rely on the U.S. the way we could in the past.

Those looking from Europe see Turkey as an economic success, whereas others from the Middle East see Turkey as a democratic success.

For Europeans a president having an affair, especially in France, is a joke. No one cares, it would never bring this kind of trouble to a country.

Europe needs to develop a sense of collective history - we need to write books from a European perspective, to teach it in schools as well.