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Quotes by German Authors
"Of all the means I know to lead men, the most effectual is a concealed mystery."
"Tact and diplomacy are fine in international relations, in politics, perhaps even in business; in science only one thing matters, and that is the facts."
"After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now?"
"What made women's labour particularly attractive to the capitalists was not only its lower price but also the greater submissiveness of women."
"He helps me every day to do my exercises. Siegfried told me once, 'The one who is a hero is the one who can hang on just one minute longer.'"
"If you have to make mistakes, make them good and big, don't be middling if you can help it."
"The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea."
"Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties."
"The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it."
"The throttles could only move very, very slowly, always watching the temperature, always watching. And even in throttling back, you could bust it, even being very careful."
"The Committee supports the idea that there should be, within the University of California, a campus which puts particular emphasis on the education of undergraduates within the framework of a College system."
"In Romanticism, the main determinant is the mood, the atmosphere. And in that regard, you could also describe Schubert as a Romantic."
"I am, as a European, absolutely shocked by European people. I am also shocked by European nationalist people. They have allowed themselves to be so emasculated so silently."
"I cannot work fast enough. I cannot cope fast enough, really. And just releasing a film is hard."
"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."
"As regards personal relationships I cannot say that I had any particularly personal intercourse with anyone."
"Color is a plastic means of creating intervals... color harmonics produced by special relationships, or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions, just as we differentiate in music between counterpoint and harmony."
"Long live the liberation of the workers off all countries from the infernal chasm of war, exploitation and slavery!"
"The courtesy which most becomes a victor was denied to Germany for a long time."
"The message of music was also the first thing what I learned from my first teacher. She was an organist too and she was very devoted to what she played, so she had a respect for every piece and she felt that she is not allowed to add something of her own."
"When a battle for suffrage is conducted, it should only be conducted according to socialist principles, and therefore with the demand of universal suffrage for women and men."
"So if you have to live amongst men, you must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with the character he has, whatever it turns out to be: and all you should strive to do is to make use of this character in such a way as its kind and nature permit, rather than to hope for any alteration in it, or to condemn it off-hand for what it is. This is the true sense of the maxim--Live and let live. That, however, is a task which is difficult in proportion as it is right; and he is a happy man who can once for all avoid having to do with a great many of his fellow creatures."
"The constitutional questions are in the first instance not questions of right but questions of might."
"The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority."
"To try to fashion something from suffering, to relish our triumphs, and to endure defeats without resentment: all that is compatible with the faith of a heretic."
"At this time I had complete confidence in Russian policy and believed that the Western Allies deliberately allowed Germany and Russia to fight each other to death."
"This war no longer has anything to do with knightly conduct or with the agreements of the Geneva Convention."
"Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master, and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe.In this way arose feudal Socialism; half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future, at times by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core, but always ludicrous in its effects, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history."
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