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Quotes by German Authors
"Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help."
"Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds."
"It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion."
"Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality."
"Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end."
"I like basketball, and I've been to three games, which is so much more fun than seeing it on TV, I think."
"We prefer synthetic rather than natural materials. Natural products are almost too valuable. Wood is much harder to produce than metal. And metal is recyclable, while wood isn't."
"My favorite kitchen was the Japanese and the Italian kitchen."
"An emancipated society, on the other hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences."
"Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt."
"You have to protect yourself, your body, your being. You cannot treat it badly; you have to keep it, make as sensitive as possible."
"Other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat."
"Many applications of the coincidence method will therefore be found in the large field of nuclear physics, and we can say without exaggeration that the method is one of the essential tools of the modern nuclear physicist."
"In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light."
"Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly."
"But if I have a lot of imagination, I could tell myself whatever I wanted, you know. I handle myself quite well. I'm kind of fascist with myself, you know. There's no discussion. There is an order. You follow it."
"Within each individual young person you meet, you have the same fields to plow. The trick is just to wake thmem up, to sharpen their ears for what's already there in the music."
"The world has become so complex that the idea of a power in which everything comes together and can be controlled in a centralized way is now erroneous."
"Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel."
"What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love."
"Even when I was very depressed, I could hold on to something. It seems that I have always had that streak of gold that I could hold on to."
"I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow."
"Unlike the expressionists, I have never been interested in renewing the world through the vehicle of art."
"You say, it's dark. And in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun. But do you not see how the edges of the cloud are already glowing and turning light."
"He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest."
"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."
"Any book which is at all important should be re-read immediately."
"I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens."
"People who do not see the terrible things therefore do not see the beautiful things, either."
"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
"Strict conservation of energy in the elementary process had thus been confirmed also by a negative experiment."
"Literature... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form."
"Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt."
"Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away."
"The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming."
"It is an open secret that Jews do not work, but rather let others work for them."
"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but you thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking."
"In essentials, unity; in differences, liberty; in all things, charity."
"All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking."
"Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one."
"It is sometimes tougher to fight my superiors than the French."
"I'm not ugly, but my beauty is a total creation."
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