”Lech Walesa is no Polish joke. He is freedom.”
-Chicago congressman Dan Rostenkowski, addressing a Washington dinner in honor of the Polish Solidarity leader during Walesa`s tour of the United States.
”If I lived in a normal, civilized country, I would never get a Nobel Prize. All I would be able to do . . . is to fix your refrigerator.”
-Walesa, a Nobel Prize-winner and former electrician at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, joking with a New York audience.
”Mr. Joe Lunchbucket is going to stand there and thumb his nose at any congressman who says that.”
-Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, contending that the public would not buy the argument that reform in congressional ethics has to be tied to a pay raise.
”We are awaiting solidarity with the whole of Europe. They should come to a rendezvous with democracy.”
-French President Francois Mitterrand, speaking to European Common Market officials about the possibility of admitting Eastern European nations that have become democratic.
