Józef Piłsudski Quotes

I am not going to dictate to you what you write about my life and work. I only ask that you not make me out to be a 'whiner and sentimentalist.'

[About Poland] A great nation, only the people are cunts.

Bolshevism is a disease which is peculiar to Russia. It will never grow deep roots in any countries which are not entirely Russian.

Only the sword now carries any weight in the balance for the destiny of a nation.

Poland can have nothing to do with the restoration of the old Russia. Anything rather than that – even Bolshevism.

All that we can gain in the west depends on the Entente — on the extent to which it may wish to squeeze Germany, [while in the east] there are doors that open and close, and it depends on who forces them open and how far.

Jerzy Robert Nowak, Na przekór skorpionom. Wyznania upartego Polaka, Warszawa 2005, p. 52.

To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's laurels, is defeat.

Józef Piłsudski, Myśli i wypsknięcia, Warszawa 2010, p. 41

There can be no independent Poland without an independent Ukraine.

[About Russians] They are all more or less disguised imperialists, including revolutionists. The trait of these minds, always longing for the absolute, is a vivid centralism. They loathe varieties, cannot conciliate dissonances - such things dull their will and imagination to the extent that they cannot combine varieties into one whole; they reject even the idea of conscious social organizations. [...] Let everything happen by itself, vividly - that is the wisest solution according to them, because it is the simplest and the easiest. Which is why there are so many anarchists among them. A strange thing, but I have never met any republicans among Russians!

Comrades, I took the red tram of socialism to the stop called Independence, and that's where I got off. You may keep on to the final stop if you wish, but from now on let's address each other 'Mister' [rather than continue using the socialist term of address, 'Comrade']!

To want to, is to be able to.

You, the Poles, have a funny nature. When the people going along the road are attacked by a dog with its insistent and noisy barking, you immediately feel like jumping off the vehicle, standing on all fours and starting to bark back at it. We, in the Vilnius region, let the dog bark because that is what its canine nature is like but we do not stop out journey because of its canine barking and without any war against dogs we calmly continue our journey until we reach our destination. It seems that you care more about barking more than the dog does and about winning the war with any lousy puppy than about reaching the destination quickly.