3 December 2020 Lech Walesa 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.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa Freedom must be gained step by step, slowly. Freedom is a food which must be carefully administered when people are too hungry for it.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa 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.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa 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?
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa 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.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa 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.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa 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.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa Dictators and oppressors should continue to fear me because I will be here for a long time.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa 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.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa 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.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa Our national history has so often filled us with bitterness and the feeling of helplessness.
3 December 2020 Lech Walesa 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.
