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Quotes by German Authors
"A complete sharing between two people is an impossibility and whenever it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a mutual agreement which robs either one member or both of his fullest freedom and development. But, once the realization is accepted that, even between the closest human beings, infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!"
"We pacifists have not ceased to point to the grave danger of armaments and to insist on their curtailment."
"When all actions are mathematically calculated, they also take on a stupid quality."
"I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom."
"One's task is not to turn the world upside down but to do what is necessary at the given place and with a due consideration of reality."
"If God is One, and if there can be no other God, there can be no idea of God."
"Those who have never seen themselves surrounded on all sides by the sea can never possess an idea of the world, and of their relation to it."
"El sabio puede cambiar de opinion. El necio, nunca."
"When you are thwarted, it is your own attitude that is out of order."
"Whoever finishes a revolution only halfway, digs his own grave."
"My first endeavor was to save the core of the German system of justice: the independent judiciary."
"Put a bird cage near the window so that the bird can see the sky? It's much better to look than not to, even if it hurts."
"The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world."
"Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility."
"There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult."
"If you fall seventy times a day, rise seventy times and return to God so that you will not fall too often."
"I made a written report which is still today in existence. I have a photocopy of it, and I am saying that in production this aircraft could perhaps substitute for three propeller- driven aircraft of the best existing type. This was my impression."
"To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow."
"Lord, whatsoever this day may bring, Thy name be praised. Be gracious unto me and help me. Grant me strength to bear whatsoever Thou dost send, And let not fear overrule me. I trust Thy grace, and commit my life wholly into Thy Hands. Whether I live or whether I die, I am with Thee and Thou art with me. Lord, I wait for Thy salvation, and for the coming of Thy Kingdom. Amen."
"Every Profound thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood."
"We would be in a nasty position indeed if empirical science were the only kind of science possible."
"As far as missile defense is concerned, a very thorough consultation process is underway."
"Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts."
"All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again."
"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."
"Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite."
"Who has not sat before his own heart's curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart."
"As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity."
"Once you have invented a character with three dimensions and a voice, you begin to realize that some of the things you'd like him to do to further your plot are things that such a person wouldn't, or couldn't, do."
"Above all, what socialist, without flushing with shame, maintains he is not a revolutionary? We say: none!."
"In the latter case life rests upon a thousand presuppositions which the individual can never trace back to their origins, and verify; but which he must accept upon faith and belief."
"The movement of the emitters of the spectral lines may be deduced on the basis of the Doppler principle."
"The human voice is the first and most natural musical instrument, also the most emotional."
"Anarchists are socialists because they want the improvement of society, and they are communists because they are convinced that such a transformation of society can only result from the establishment of a commonwealth of property."
"From the perspective of mere representation, the external world always remains only a phenomenon."
"He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being."
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