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Six years ago, I didn’t hope, I didn’t dream that in 1995 I would win the presidential election. But the situation in Poland changed very fast, and became totally unpredictable. Poland is going on this democratic way faster than we thought before.

— Aleksander Kwaśniewski

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Source: "Aleksander Kwasniewski : Rising From the Ashes of Communism in Poland" in Los Angeles Times (3 December 1995)
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Aleksander Kwaśniewski

Poland really started to change in 1989. Since then, we have achieved our main goals: we are in the European Union, we are in NATO, and we finally have democracy after almost fifty years of communist rule. We have a full-fledged free-market economy.

Two decades of democratization: interview with Aleksander Kwasniewski (2006)

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Today there is no communism in Europe, no Warsaw Pact, no balance of fear. We, Poles, have a great satisfaction that the cause of the construction of better, united and secure Europe of free people began in Poland and has achieved the present phase here, in Rome.

In the old Belarusian society, women’s stories—however important—were silenced. The crucial change we observe now is that women are not only organising to survive but they are leading the fight. That is indeed incredibly inspirational!

The Cold War walls have come down. They have set free the spirits of freedom and democracy, but also unleashed the demons of new threats to security. Among those threats are unconventional capabilities of the so-called "states of concern."

We have become aware of the responsibility for our attitude towards the dark pages in our history. We have understood that bad service is done to the nation by those who are impelling to renounce that past. Such attitude leads to a moral self-destruction.

I understand that if someone asks me to be part of some project it’s not only because I’m so good, it’s also because I am Kwasniewski and I am a former president of Poland. And this is all inter-connected. No-names are a nobody.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Aleksander Kwaśniewski (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.