Quotes by Lech Walesa

"I belong to a nation which over the past centuries has experienced many hardships and reverses. The world reacted with silence or with mere sympathy when Polish frontiers were crossed by invading armies and the sovereign state had to succumb to brutal force."

"I got politics and economics moving and then others took over."

"As a nation we have the right to decide our own affairs, to mould our own future. This does not pose any danger to anybody. Our nation is fully aware of the responsibility for its own fate in the complicated situation of the contemporary world."

"I most sincerely wish that the world in which we live be free from the threat of a nuclear holocaust and from the ruinous arms race. It is my cherished desire that peace be not separated from freedom which is the right of every nation. This I desire and for this I pray."

"My youth passed at the time of the country's reconstruction from the ruins and ashes of the war in which my nation never bowed to the enemy paying the highest price in the struggle."

"The hope of the nation which throughout the nineteenth century had not for a moment reconciled itself with the loss of independence, and fighting for its own freedom, fought at the same time for the freedom of other nations."

"Dictators and oppressors should continue to fear me because I will be here for a long time."

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

"Our national history has so often filled us with bitterness and the feeling of helplessness."

"The politicians always told us that the Cold War stand-off could only change by way of nuclear war. None of them believed that such systemic change was possible."

"The thing that lies at the foundation of positive change, the way I see it, is service to a fellow human being."

"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 want to light the lights of patriotism."

"You have riches and freedom here but I feel no sense of faith or direction. You have so many computers, why don't you use them in the search for love?"

"Our firm conviction that ours is a just cause and that we must find a peaceful way to attain our goals gave us the strength and the awareness of the limits beyond which we must not go."

"I use many different gadgets connected with computers I use PCs, laptops and a Palm Pilot. I also use the Internet to visit websites, especially within Polish-language Internet. I usually go to political discussion groups and sites - of course, as I use my real name, people never believe that they are chatting with me!"

"Lying at the root of the social agreements of 1980 are the courage, sense of responsibility, and the solidarity of the working people. Both sides have then recognized that an accord must be reached if bloodshed is to be prevented."

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

"My health is very much improved."

"I belong to the generation of workers who, born in the villages and hamlets of rural Poland, had the opportunity to acquire education and find employment in industry, becoming in the course conscious of their rights and importance in society."

"I hope to work harder than ever to help people around the world."

"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."