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Quotes by German Authors
"In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light."
"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."
"One can become enthusiastic over anything. For a time I was delighted with bomb throwing. It gave me a tremendous pleasure to bomb those fellows from above."
"The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice."
"Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel."
"Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time, are either psychopaths or mountebanks."
"In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods."
"The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills. 'Behold, just now the world became perfect!'-thus thinks every woman when she obeys out of entire love. And women must obey and find a depth for her surface. Surface is the disposition of woman: a mobile, stormy film over shallow water. Man's disposition, however, is deep; his river roars in subterranean caves: woman feels his strength but does not comprehend it."
"Since that time I have had continuous contact with the persons who were completely unknown to me, except that I knew they would hand whatever information I gave them to the Russian authorities."
"The lived experiences which could not find adequate scientific expression in the substance doctrine of rational psychology were now validated in light of new and better methods."
"The arts, as a reflection of human existence at its highest, have always and spontaneously lived up to this demand of plenitude. No mature style of art in any culture has ever been simple."
"If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?"
"To think Being itself explicitly requires disregarding Being to the extent that it is only grounded and interpreted in terms of beings and for beings as their ground, as in all metaphysics."
"Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes."
"How surely gravity's law,strong as an ocean current,takes hold of the smallest thingand pulls it toward the heart of the world.Each thing---each stone, blossom, child---is held in place.Only we, in our arrogance,push out beyond what we each belong tofor some empty freedom.If we surrenderedto earth's intelligencewe could rise up rooted, like trees.Instead we entangle ourselvesin knots of our own makingand struggle, lonely and confused.So like children, we begin againto learn from the things,because they are in God's heart;they have never left him.This is what the things can teach us:to fall,patiently to trust our heaviness.Even a bird has to do thatbefore he can fly."
"It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us."
"You are aware of only one unrest;Oh, never learn to know the other!Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,And one is striving to forsake its brother.Unto the world in grossly loving zest,With clinging tendrils, one adheres;The other rises forcibly in questOf rarefied ancestral spheres.If there be spirits in the airThat hold their sway between the earth and sky,Descend out of the golden vapors thereAnd sweep me into iridescent life.Oh, came a magic cloak into my handsTo carry me to distant lands,I should not trade it for the choicest gown,Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown."
"I would like to mention that I have flown the 262 first in May '43. At this time, the aircraft was completely secret. I first knew of the existence of this aircraft only early in '42 - even in my position. This aircraft didn't have any priority in design or production."
"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."
"What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions - they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force."
"The situation in Iraq is dangerous but the regional situation is also very complicated and precarious."
"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
"Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think."
"Then they held my mouth shut for a while and hit me in the face, and with a whip across chest and back. I then collapsed, rolled on the floor, always keeping face down and no longer replied to any of their questions."
"Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite."
"Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands."
"Being and time determine each other reciprocally, but in such a manner that neither can the former - Being - be addressed as something temporal nor can the latter - time - be addressed as a being."
"You are treading your path of greatness: now it must call up all your courage that there is no longer a path behind you!You are treading your path of greatness: no one shall steal after you here! Your foot itself has extinguished the path behind you, and above that path stands written: Impossibility."
"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone."
"I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist."
"As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity."
"The short English miles are delightful for walking. You are always pleased to find, every now and then, in how short a time you have walked a mile, though, no doubt, a mile is everywhere a mile, I walk but a moderate pace, and can accomplish four English miles in an hour."
"Invisible threads are the strongest ties."
"If only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful."
"First I shake the whole Apple tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf."
"Soldiers and peasants lived together on friendly terms; they knew each other and their everyday routines, and trusted each other; they shook their heads together over the war."
"The vast majority of Muslims living here are peaceful citizens. Unfortunately, however, we also see religious and political fanaticism among Muslim groups in Germany."
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