Józef Piłsudski

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

Józef Piłsudski (December 5, 1867 – May 12, 1935) was a Polish revolutionary and statesman, marshal, first chief of state (1918–1922) and authoritarian leader (1926–1935) of renascent Poland, and founder of her armed forces. He is considered a national hero by the vast majority of the Polish people. Also he is known for his straightforward and sometimes vulgar comments.

Attributed

• 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.'
  • (1908) Bohdan Urbankowski, Józef Piłsudski: Dreamer and Strategist, 1997, ISBN 8370019145, p. 133

• Only the sword now carries any weight in the balance for the destiny of a nation.
  • (1914) Adam Zamoyski (1987). The Polish Way. London: John Murray. pp. 422. ISBN 0531150690. "p. 332" 

• 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.
  • (Probably 1918) Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003, ISBN 0375760520, p. 211.

• 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']!
  • Józef Piłsudski (1867 - 1935). Poland.gov. Retrieved on April 23, 2006.

• Poland can have nothing to do with the restoration of the old Russia. Anything rather than that – even Bolshevism.
  • Joseph Pilsduski. Interview by Dymitr Merejkowsky, 1921. Translated from the Russian by Harriet E. Kennedy, B.A., London & Edinburgh, Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd., 1921. Quoted from this site.

• To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's laurels, is defeat.
  • (Late 1920s or the 1930s) Zbigniew Brzezinski in his introduction to Wacław Jędrzejewicz’s Piłsudski: A Life For Poland. Quoted from this website

• To want to, is to be able to.
  • Peter Ackerman, Jack Duvall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, Palgrave, 2001, ISBN 0312240503, Google Books, p.165

• Bolshevism is a disease which is peculiar to Russia. It will never grow deep roots in any countries which are not entirely Russian.
  • Aleksandra Piłsudski, Memoirs of Madame Piłsudski, 1940

About him

• He was the only great man to emerge on the scene during the [First World] war.
  • Joseph Conrad. Zdzisław Najder, Conrad under Familial Eyes, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 052125082X Books, p. 239.

• Józef Piłsudski will remain in the memory of our nation as the founder of independence and as the victorious leader who fended off a foreign assault that threatened the whole of Europe and its civilization. Józef Piłsudski served his country well, and has entered our history forever.
  • Declaration of the Sejm (Lower House) of the Polish Parliament, May 12, 1995, the 60th anniversary of Piłsudski's death. Józef Piłsudski

• [H]e was king of our hearts and ruler of our will. Through half a century of his life’s travails, he took into his possession heart after heart, soul after soul, until he had drawn the whole of Poland under the purple of his royal spirit.[...] He gave Poland freedom, boundaries, power and respect.
  • Polish President Ignacy Mościcki, speaking at Piłsudski's 1935 funeral. Józef Piłsudski

• Whoever had the choice, would choose an eagle's nest on the cliffs in place of a home. May he know how to sleep, though his eyes be red from the thunder, and listen to the cries of the wild spirits in the murmur of the pines.
  • Polish Romantic poet Juliusz Słowacki, quoted on tombstone of Józef Piłsudski's mother, with whom Piłsudski's heart is interred.