Jacques Delors famous quotes

06-15-2025

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

#Europe #Political #Essentials
Yes, the European model remains superior to that of America and Japan.
-- Jacques Delors

#Japan #Europe #America
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

#Europe #Avant Garde #Unions
Even in Britain, the trade unions tell me that employment contracts have less protection than in the past.
-- Jacques Delors

#Past #Employment #Unions
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

#People #Incentives #Provision
My problem is how to find the best way of being useful.
-- Jacques Delors

#Way #Problem
Fundamentally, American society is composed of individuals who don't go out of their way to do each other favours.
-- Jacques Delors

#Way #Favour #Individual
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

#Guy #Cinema #Weak
The driving force behind the liberal counter-offensive in Europe has been a reaction against irresponsibility.
-- Jacques Delors

#Europe #Driving #Offensive
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

#Thinking #People #Growth
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

#Jobs #Thinking #Government
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

#Struggle #Wings #Want
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

#Europe #Roles #World
Therefore one should speak at the same time of national citizenship and wider European citizenship.
-- Jacques Delors

#Europe #Citizenship #Speak
This desire for equity must not lead to an excess of welfare, where nobody is responsible for anything.
-- Jacques Delors

#Desire #Excess #Welfare
If you don't have collective agreements between unions and employers, governments have to legislate more.
-- Jacques Delors

#Government #Agreement #Unions
Any union that can't accept workers choosing their own representatives through universal franchise is finished.
-- Jacques Delors

#Unions #Economics #Accepting
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

#People #Wife #My Wife
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

#Regret #Party #Presidential
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

#Leader #Political #Groups
For me, socialism has always been about liberty and solidarity, but also about responsibility.
-- Jacques Delors

#Responsibility #Liberty #Socialism
This weakening is worsened by the widening distance between the governed and their governments.
-- Jacques Delors

#Distance #Government #Long
The unions may continue to decline, but if they do, it'll be their fault.
-- Jacques Delors

#Aggravation #Unions #May
I cannot resign myself to the decline of Europe, and of France.
-- Jacques Delors

#Europe #Aggravation #France
The European model is in danger if we obliterate the principle of personal responsibility.
-- Jacques Delors

#Responsibility #Europe #Principles
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

#Thinking #Creating #Issues

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