 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. |
| 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. |
| I'm lazy. But it's the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they didn't like walking or carrying things. |
| Let the veil of silence fall presently over what happened afterwards. Silence, too, can speak out. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless. |
| The defense of our rights and our dignity, as well as efforts never to let ourselves to be overcome by the feeling of hatred - this is the road we have chosen. |
| Our national history has so often filled us with bitterness and the feeling of helplessness. |
| We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions. |
| I made the right decisions, I set everything on the right course, the reforms are going in the right direction. |
| 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. |
| My most ardent desire is that my country will recapture its historic opportunity for a peaceful evolution and that Poland will prove to the world that even the most complex situations can be solved by a dialogue and not by force. |
| 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. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| I must tell you that the supply of words on the world market is plentiful, but the demand is falling. |
| He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed. |
| The supply of words in the world market is plentiful but the demand is falling. Let deeds follow words now. |
| When I recall my own path of life I cannot but speak of the violence, hatred and lies. A lesson drawn from such experiences, however, was that we can effectively oppose violence only if we ourselves do not resort to it. |
