Jacques Delors Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“My objective is that before the end of the millennium Europe should have a true federation. The Commission should become a political executive which can define essential common interests...responsible before the European Parliament and before the nation-states represented how you will, by the European Council or by a second chamber of national parliaments.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“Yes, the European model remains superior to that of America and Japan.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“We will have to create an avant-garde.... We could have a Union for the enlarged Europe, and a Federation for the avant-garde.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“Even in Britain, the trade unions tell me that employment contracts have less protection than in the past.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“I would not be opposed to devising a new system of pensions, in which one part was based on collective provision, but which also gave incentives for people to take out an additional, personal plan.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“My problem is how to find the best way of being useful.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“Fundamentally, American society is composed of individuals who don't go out of their way to do each other favours.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“Cinema explains American society. It's like a Western, with good guys and bad guys, where the weak don't have a place.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“The driving force behind the liberal counter-offensive in Europe has been a reaction against irresponsibility.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“The problem with a purely collective system is not only that it requires economic growth, and the right sort of demographic trends, but that it prevents people thinking about their futures in a responsible way.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“The unions still have a job to do, representing their members' interests to governments and parliaments. And I think collective agreements still have a role, alongside markets and laws.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“We have to struggle against the conservatives from all sides, not only the right-wingers, but also the left-wing conservatives who don't want to change anything.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“The European model is, first, a social and economic system founded on the role of the market, for no computer in the world can process information better than the market.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“Therefore one should speak at the same time of national citizenship and wider European citizenship.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“This desire for equity must not lead to an excess of welfare, where nobody is responsible for anything.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“If you don't have collective agreements between unions and employers, governments have to legislate more.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“Any union that can't accept workers choosing their own representatives through universal franchise is finished.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“Contrary to what people say, my wife never turned me away from the presidency. She told me to reflect on it and do what I wanted.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“My presidential victory, if it had happened, would have been artificial in relation to the Socialist party. It may be that on my deathbed, I will come to regret my decision, but for the moment, I live at peace with it.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“These days there are not enough of such intermediary groups, between the state and the individual, with the result that political leaders are often unduly guided by opinion polls.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“For me, socialism has always been about liberty and solidarity, but also about responsibility.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“This weakening is worsened by the widening distance between the governed and their governments.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“The unions may continue to decline, but if they do, it'll be their fault.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“I cannot resign myself to the decline of Europe, and of France.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“The European model is in danger if we obliterate the principle of personal responsibility.”
-- Jacques Delors -
“The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people.”
-- Jacques Delors
