Daily Inspiration Quote by Jan Peter Balkenende

“Bitter experience” is doing the heavy lifting here: it’s a compact way for a statesman to invoke crisis without litigating specifics. Balkenende’s line leans on the political alchemy of hardship, suggesting that suffering doesn’t just wound a society; it clarifies it. The phrasing flatters the audience’s endurance while quietly disciplining dissent: if values are “taught” by pain, questioning them can be cast as naïve, even disrespectful to what was endured.

The sentence is built like a moral escalation. “Fundamental” frames values as bedrock, not preference. Then “mission” upgrades those values from private conviction to public obligation, implying not only that a community believes something, but that it is tasked with carrying it forward. That word choice matters in a European context where “values” often stands in for a bundle of liberal-democratic commitments - rule of law, tolerance, human rights - that politicians want to present as non-negotiable amid shocks like terrorism, cultural polarization, or geopolitical anxiety.

The subtext is a subtle call for unity and resolve, but it also contains a familiar hazard: the vaguer the “values,” the easier they are to weaponize. “Bitter experience” can justify vigilance and solidarity; it can also license exceptional measures in the name of protecting the very ideals being invoked. Balkenende’s rhetorical move is to turn memory into mandate, converting trauma into a forward-facing legitimacy claim: we have suffered, therefore we know, therefore we must act.