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Quotes by German Authors
"Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas."
"Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice."
"Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it."
"Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis."
"Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence."
"The art of not reading is a very important one. [. . .] [Y]ou should remember that he who writes for fools always find a large public. " A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: For life is short."
"The vast majority of Muslims living here are peaceful citizens. Unfortunately, however, we also see religious and political fanaticism among Muslim groups in Germany."
"You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be."
"Ideals are like the stars: we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course by them."
"For awhile, I was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy."
"I will do everything I can to bring the Number One to Ferrari. The whole team and all the fans deserve it."
"We have points in common with the FDP, particularly when it comes to tax."
"The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error."
"Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders."
"My host at Richmond, yesterday morning, could not sufficiently express his surprise that I intended to venture to walk as far as Oxford, and still farther. He however was so kind as to send his son, a clever little boy, to show me the road leading to Windsor."
"At the head of these new discoveries and insights comes the establishment of the facts that electricity is composed of discrete particles of equal size, or quanta, and that light is an electromagnetic wave motion."
"If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world."
"There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don't ask, walk!"
"To be incapable of taking one's enemies, one's accidents, even one's misdeeds seriously for very long - that is the sign of strong full natures in whom there is an excess of power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget. Mirabeau had no memory for insults and vile actions done to him and was unable to forgive simply because he - forgot. Such a man shakes off with a single shrug the many vermin that eat deep into others."
"You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length."
"The church of St. Peter at Berlin, notwithstanding the total difference between them in the style of building, appears in some respects to have a great resemblance to St. Paul's in London."
"This will help us next year with the World Cup. I can imagine a lot of visitors from abroad will be here and asking what happened between 1933 and 1945. A lot of that will come up. I think this will make an important contribution to those discussions."
"In all my activities as Armament Minister I never once visited a labor camp, and cannot, therefore, give any information about them."
"No, I'm not a French designer either. I'm from nowhere. I'm a European, old European is all I am."
"When one has not had a good father one must create one."
"Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day."
"And then '74 as I mentioned and then the 1990 world cup was our team was the team of the reunification you know, so we were the team for both sides of Germany so now, you know throughout the last 16 years, we've melted together. And now comes the next milestone."
"I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me."
"What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations. Art never can be imitation."
"All science is experiential; but all experience must be related back to and derives its its validity from the conditions and context of consciousness in which it arises, i.e., the totality of our nature."
"Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics."
"Free yourself from the rigid conduct of tradition and open yourself to the new forms of probability."
"If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality."
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