"It is hardly possible to build anything if frustration, bitterness and a mood of helplessness prevail."
"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."
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Source: Lech Walesa's Nobel lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1983.
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"We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless."
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"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."