In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example, and France has followed it, of charters of power granted by liberty.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.

[Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]

Luxembourg was and still is today a crossroads, the place where Germany meets the rest of Europe. The country lost part of its territory to Belgium in the 1800s, and during World Wars I and II the German military overran it. Very few people have visited Luxembourg – when I went there and looked at it, I said, my God, it’s built on a rock. And within the rock they had a castle, and within the city there’s a network of tunnels so the residents could move around and defend themselves. That was of great interest to me.

As in Europe, the typical American witch-suspect was a woman, frequently middle-aged with few or no children and a reputation as a difficult personality.

Americans don’t like puns and plays on words, which is totally opposite in the comedy world to France or even Italy and Germany.

You want the best players to be on form come the Euros.

There’s a big difference between how the Anglo-Saxon world views India, or viewed India, and the way Europe views India.

Europe were kind of the first ones to embrace my music; the kids from around the way would come out to my shows and really enjoy it

At the end of the eighteenth century, science was one of the few areas in old Europe where illegitimacy could not overshadow accomplishment

It is in Europe that we are born and bred to a single role. America is populated by second acts, encores and revivals.

Europe is, for the most part, a hugger-mugger continent that works best on the consensus of inertia and precedent. Those who have dogmatic and contrarian beliefs can cause disproportionate ructions and ripples in our overcrowded and hierarchical communities

Europe is a place that conserves. It maintains, it curates its civilization, protects it against the ravages and rust of other cultures, and the rot of time and intellectual theft. We are a continent where fear of losing what we have is greater than the ambition to make it anew

In New York the color of my skin stood between myself and me, but in Europe that barrier was down.

The most important thing Paris gave me was a perspective on Latin America. It taught me the differences between Latin America and Europe and among the Latin American countries themselves through the Latins I met there.

We don’t mind having sanctions banning us from Europe. We are not Europeans.

I am not, never have been, and never will be a politician. But I want to tell you the United States has always been proud of having the support of the United Kingdom, of keeping Britain in Europe. We need Britain in Europe

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

There’s enough garlic in here to kill every vampire in Europe.

With Christianity, freedom and equality became the two basic concepts of Europe; they are themselves Europe.

Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities

The Germans are the only decent people left in Europe. It’s a choice between them and the Russians, I prefer the Germans.

What we are doing is to destroy the only semi-modern state in Europe, so that Russia can swallow the whole.

And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars–all over Europe, all over the world. Sometimes in the private interest of royal families, Satan said, ‘sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose–there is no such war in the history of the race.‘

During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it.

Whether it is in the United States or in mainland Europe, written constitutions have one great weakness. That is that they contain the potential to have judges take decisions which should properly be made by democratically elected politicians.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri – where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.

In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world.