Map of europe

Modern European History: Understanding Changing Ideologies Through the Quote

By andrew.wells991
  • Period: to

    Modern Europe Through the Quote

  • King Louis XIV

    King Louis XIV
    King Louis XIV said, "It is legal because I wish it" before the Parliament in Paris in 1655 to assert his absolute rule over the French land and its subjects.

  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    Rousseau wrote in his "Social Contract," "The strongest man is never strong enough to be master all the time, unless he transforms force into right and obedience into duty,"
    reflecting the enlightenment sentiment that leaders are subject to the will of their people.

  • Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte I

    Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte I
    To a group of Catholic clergy members, Napoleon stated, "I am a monarch of God's creation, and you reptiles of the earth dare not oppose me. I render an account of government to none save God and Jesus Christ"
    This reflects the supreme rule which the emperor demanded during the post-French Revolutionary, Napoleonic age.

  • Klemens von Metternich

    Klemens von Metternich
    At the Concert of Vienna, Metternich stated; "Stability is not Immobility," reflecting his desire for conservatism to combat notions of liberalism and nationalism in a Europe that was in disorderr following the Napoleonic Wars.

  • Karl Marx

    Karl Marx
    In his "Critique of the Gotha Programme," Marx wrote, "Between capitalist and communist societies lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." Demonstating support for the revolutionary movements as a way to fight against the conservative order in Europe.

  • Adolf Hitler

    Adolf Hitler
    In a speech to the officer cadets at the Berlin Sportpalast, Hitler stated, "Truly, this earth is a trophy cup for the industrious man. And this rightly so, in the service of natural selection. He who does not possess the force to secure his Lebensraum in this world, and, if necessary, to enlarge it, does not deserve to possess the necessities of life. He must step aside and allow stronger peoples to pass him by." This quote reflects the nationalist and racist ideologies of this era.