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Quotes by German Authors

"Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace."

"Nothing truly valuable can be achieved except by the unselfish cooperation of many individuals."

"The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment."

"The Jews are the scum of the earth, but they are also great masters in lying."

"Disease is a vital expression of the human organism."

"The Jew is a devil in human form. It is fitting that he be exterminated root and branch."

"The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter."

"No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas."

"Modern culture is constantly growing more objective. Its tissues grow more and more out of impersonal energies, and absorb less and less the subjective entirety of the individual."

"I will say nothing against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever."

"There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact."

"Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself."

"Understanding sometimes is not enough to explain something."

"The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting."

"Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying."

"Great music does not just make me feel good. It means something. It makes us understand. It makes us happy."

"We pacifists have not ceased to point to the grave danger of armaments and to insist on their curtailment."

"All problems are illusions of the mind."

"We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori."

"Exuberant health is always, as such, sickness also."

"In the end one loves one's desire and not what is desired."

"Achievements, seldom credited to their source, are the result of unspeakable drudgery and worries."

"Animals are in possession of themselves; their soul is in possession of their body. But they have no right to their life, because they do not will it."

"Technology has a great advantage in that we are capable of creating dinosaurs and show them on the screen even though they are extinct 65 million years. All of a sudden, we have a fantastic tool that is as good as dreams are."

"Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour."

"When I started out, I preferred to watch my films without music, as its presence tends to mask the underlying pace of the film. I felt I could feel the rhythm of the film better without music to influence me."

"Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life."

"Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized."

"Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think."

"Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite."

"Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks they can talk about language."

"I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man."

"First keep peace with yourself, then you can also bring peace to others."

"We have to cease to think, if we refuse to do it in the prison house of language; for we cannot reach further than the doubt which asks whether the limit we see is really a limit."

"We still by no means think decisively enough about the essence of action."

"To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence."

"I never went to a modeling school, and I don't suggest to anybody that they go to a modeling school."
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