Lech Walesa Quotes That Are leadership, solidarity and reform

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

I am overjoyed that I do not need a heart transplant at this time.

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.

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.

We respect the dignity and the rights of every man and every nation.

The path to a brighter future of the world leads through honest reconciliation of the conflicting interests and not through hatred and bloodshed. To follow that path means to enhance the moral power of the all-embracing idea of human solidarity.

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.

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.

The fall of the Berlin Wall makes for nice pictures. But it all started in the shipyards.

Words are plentiful; deeds are precious.

Everyone wants a voice in human freedom. There's a fire burning inside all of us.

Obviously people want social calm, but if you do not let clever and ingenious people to participate, obviously there must be some dormant volcano that will erupt, sooner or later.

Communism is a monopolistic system, economically and politically.

The system suppresses individual initiative, and the 21st century is all about individualism and freedom. The development of technology supported these directions.

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

In many parts of the world the people are searching for a solution which would link the two basic values: peace and justice. The two are like bread and salt for mankind.

I am happy that Poland is returning to the road of pluralism and democracy.

We must be courageous but also reasonable.

The world admires us for walking a tightrope without falling off. It asks us to keep our balance.

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.

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

I have always been and will be an enemy of communism, but I love all people.

I must tell you that the supply of words on the world market is plentiful, but the demand is falling.

The program of our movement stems from the fundamental moral laws and order.

Power is only important as an instrument for service to the powerless.

There is something of the warrior in me.

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

This conviction brought me, in the summer of 1978, to the Free Trade Unions - formed by a group of courageous and dedicated people who came out in the defense of the workers' rights and dignity.

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 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.

Let the veil of silence fall presently over what happened afterwards. Silence, too, can speak out.

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?

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 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!

I made the right decisions, I set everything on the right course, the reforms are going in the right direction.

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.

When I was fighting communism, there was rapid development of satellite television and cell phones, and communism, to survive, would have to block all these information devices.

I believe that any violation of privacy is nothing good.

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

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

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.

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.

Irrespective of todays judgment and the price we had to pay in this generation, we were able to close an epoch of divisions, different blocs and borders, opening the way for an era of globalization.

I realize that the strivings of the Polish people gave rise, and still do so, to the feelings of understanding and solidarity all over the world.

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.

What until then seemed impossible to achieve has become a fact of life. We have won the right to association in trade unions independent from the authorities, founded and shaped by the working people themselves.

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.

My country is in the grips of a major economic crisis. This is causing dramatic consequences for the very existence of Polish families. A permanent economic crisis in Poland may also have serious repercussions for Europe. Thus, Poland ought to be helped and deserves help.

I only fear God, and my wife - sometimes.

The supply of words in the world market is plentiful but the demand is falling. Let deeds follow words now.

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 allowed myself to be taken in by the intellectuals. I believed too much in the Polish intellectuals and followed their advice.