Roman Dmowski Quotes

Roman Stanisław Dmowski [ˈrɔman staˈɲiswaf ˈdmɔfski] was a Polish politician, statesman, and co-founder and chief ideologue of the right-wing National Democracy political movement. He saw the aggressive Germanization of Polish territories controlled by the German Empire as the major threat to Polish culture and therefore advocated a degree of accommodation with another power that had partitioned Poland, the Russian Empire. He favored the re-establishment of Polish independence by nonviolent means, and supported policies favorable to the Polish middle class. During World War I, in Paris, through his Polish National Committee he was a prominent spokesman, to the Allies, for Polish aspirations. He was a principal figure instrumental in the postwar restoration of Poland's independent existence.

Dmowski never wielded official political power, except for a brief period in 1923 as minister of foreign affairs. Nevertheless, he was one of the most influential Polish ideologues and politicians of his time. A controversial personality all his life and since, Dmowski believed that only an ethnic Polish-speaking and Roman Catholic could be a good Pole; his thinking marginalized other ethnic minority groups living in Poland, and he was vocally anti-semitic. He remains a prototype of Polish nationalism and has been hailed as "the father of Polish nationalism". Throughout most of his life, he was the chief ideological opponent of the Polish military and political leader Józef Piłsudski and of the latter's vision of Poland as a multinational federation against German and Russian imperialism.

✵ 9. August 1864 – 2. January 1939
Roman Dmowski photo
Roman Dmowski: 5   quotes 1   like

Famous Roman Dmowski Quotes

“Wherever we can multiply our forces and our civilizational efforts, absorbing other elements, no law can prohibit us from doing so, as such actions are our duty.”

Tomaszewski J. Kresy Wschodnie w polskiej myśli politycznej XIX i XX w.//Między Polską etniczną a historyczną. Polska myśl polityczna XIX i XX wieku.—T.6.—Warszawa, 1988.—S.101. Cited through: Oleksandr Derhachov (editor), "Ukrainian Statehood in the Twentieth Century: Historical and Political Analysis", 1996, Kiev

“The only salvation for us is to stop being an incoherent, loose mob and to change into a strongly organized, disciplined army.”

"Walka o prawo i organizacja narodowa", Przegląd Wszechpolski, vol. 9 (June 1903).

“The nation becomes the master of its fate not only when it has many good sons, but also when it possesses enough strength to restrain its bad ones.”

"Podstawy polityki polskiej", Przegląd Wszechpolski (July 1905): 343, 349, 358-359.

“In relations with other nations, there is neither right nor wrong; there is only strength and weakness.”

Myśli nowoczesnego Polaka, 7th ed., 1953, p. 14.

Similar authors

Stanisław Jerzy Lec photo
Stanisław Jerzy Lec 28
Polish writer
Janusz Korczak photo
Janusz Korczak 3
Polish physician and writer
Isaac Bashevis Singer photo
Isaac Bashevis Singer 39
Polish-born Jewish-American author
Wisława Szymborska photo
Wisława Szymborska 92
Polish writer
Czeslaw Milosz photo
Czeslaw Milosz 106
Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator
Marie Curie photo
Marie Curie 21
French-Polish physicist and chemist
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Rosa Luxemburg 56
Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolut…
Les Brown photo
Les Brown 24
American politician
Andrzej Sapkowski photo
Andrzej Sapkowski 18
Novelist
Gore Vidal photo
Gore Vidal 163
American writer