We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless.
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.
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.
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.
Our national history has so often filled us with bitterness and the feeling of helplessness.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 made the right decisions, I set everything on the right course, the reforms are going in the right direction.
The thing that lies at the foundation of positive change, the way I se it, is service to a fellow human being.
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.
Let the veil of silence fall presently over what happened afterwards. Silence, too, can speak out.
It is hardly possible to build anything if frustration, bitterness and a mood of helplessness prevail.
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.
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.
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 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.
The program of our movement stems from the fundamental moral laws and order.
I have always been and will be an enemy of communism, but I love all people.
I got politics and economics moving and then others took over.
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 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.
He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed.
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 must tell you that the supply of words on the world market is plentiful, but the demand is falling.
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.