Konstantinos Karamanlis Quotes

Prime Minister of Greece intermittently between 1955–80, President from 1980–85, 1990–95

Konstantinos Karamanlis (8 March 1907 – 23 April 1998) was a Greek politician and a dominant figure in Greek politics. He was the four-time Prime Minister of Greece and two-term president of the Third Hellenic Republic. A towering figure in Greek politics, his political career spanned over seven decades, covering much of the latter half of the 20th century.

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Native Name: Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής

Alternative Names: Konstantin Karamanlis

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In democracies, prime ministers do not go to prison. They return home.

Hellas has been transformed to an endless bedlam.

Greece belongs to the West.

What Right are you talking about? Am I the Right-winger? And who are the Leftists? Wasn’t it I who, as soon as I took over after the Civil War, stopped the executions and opened the prisons and exile camps? Wasn’t it the centrists who made Law 509, all the anti-communist legislation, the political loyalty declarations, the prisons, the exiles, and the executions? I took office just six years after the Civil War ended. And immediately, I found myself in the middle. On one side were my own people, the right-wingers, who wanted us to crush the communists, and on the other side were the communists, who refused to accept their defeat. So, gradually, I released them from prison; I didn’t carry out any executions, and I safeguarded the democracy of that time. So, I am the right-winger, and they are the democrats, who did all these things, which I found ready-made? And didn’t I also legalize the Communist Party after the dictatorship? Didn’t I withdraw from NATO when it was necessary? Didn’t I nationalize the companies of Andreadis, Onassis, and Niarchos? Didn’t I achieve the smooth and bloodless transition from dictatorship to democracy? Didn’t I contribute decisively to the abolition of the monarchy? Didn’t I guarantee the alternation of parties in power? Didn’t I draft the best Constitution Greece ever had? So what are you telling me now about being the leader of the Right? You all need to understand that the time has come to move away from slogans and labels, and for the parties to stop trapping people in rhetoric, in which they then become entangled themselves.

Who governs this country?

It is our opinion that the misfortunes of our people are mainly due to the imperfect organization and shortcomings of public life [...] The problem is of a political nature [... and it can only be solved with the creation of] a new political force that will become the point of convergence of all progressive and healthy elements of our times [...] a force that will generate a new political and moral ethos.

Greece is plagued by just one single problem: its politics. The misfortune of our people is caused by the unhealthy nature of the political environment and the defective organization of public life.

You made me come back on 24 July in order to save the country that was in danger. But if you do not mean to give me the ample majority I need to carry out my mission, then what is the point of having me back?

In the history of all nations, there are instances in which the crisis of institutions and morals becomes so deep that, in order to save democracy, one should remake it.

As you know, the functioning of democracy and especially of parliamentary democracy presupposes the existence of parties with [long] traditions, steadfast principles, a program, as well as a leadership inspired by a sense of responsibility. Because political parties [...] have the most decisive role in democracies. In point of fact, one can claim that it is political parties rather than governments that peoples attach to; and that a regimes fortune is more affected by the number and behavior of [its] political parties than by its formal institutional framework.