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Quotes by German Authors
"Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law."
"To such idle talk it might further be added: that whenever a certain exclusive occupation is coupled with specific shortcomings, it is likewise almost certainly divorced from certain other shortcomings."
"A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth."
"In The Name of the King is the right title. To be honest, I don't know who had the final idea for the title but I liked it and it has a strong connection to the movie's story."
"One thing, however, did become clear to him-why so many perfect works of art did not please him at all, why they were almost hateful and boring to him, in spite of a certain undeniable beauty. Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing-mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery."
"They are shooting The Thief Lord in Venice at the moment."
"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but you thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking."
"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."
"Young entrepreneurs should spend an awful lot of time thinking about what they want to go into."
"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."
"For it is, and must remain, the case that we must obey God rather than man."
"So we have a commitment to the business and to its people."
"Natural objects, for example, must be experienced before any theorizing about them can occur."
"If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom."
"Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will."
"Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't."
"Activate yourself to duty by remembering your position, who you are, and what you have obliged yourself to be."
"The supernatural birth of Christ, his miracles, his resurrection and ascension, remain eternal truths, whatever doubts may be cast on their reality as historical facts."
"I joined the Communist Party because I felt I had to be in some organization."
"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."
"Worthless is the nation that does not gladly stake its all on its honor."
"In the middle of my third Hollywood picture The Magician, the earthquake hit Hollywood. Not the real earthquake. Just the talkies."
"I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right."
"But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience."
"A statesman... must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment."
"You know, many people have called me, friends from the nationalist camp, revisionists and so on, from around the world, have called me over the years - and now again because of what happened - and they are all very cynical about the police and the authorities."
"When we see that almost everything men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort and encountering a thousand toils and dangers in the process, has, in the end, no further object than to raise themselves in the estimation of others; when we see that not only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even knowledge[1] and art, are striven for only to obtain, as the ultimate goal of all effort, greater respect from one's fellowmen,-is not this a lamentable proof of the extent to which human folly can go?"
"When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols."
"Like Leibniz's possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences."
"Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture."
"The constant flux and caprice of mental events do not admit of the establishment of stable experimental conditions."
"Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion."
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