top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by German Authors
"After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones."
"Meanwhile the fact that the connection with the activity of memory in ordinary life is for the moment lost is of less importance than the reverse, namely, that this connection with the complications and fluctuations of life is necessarily still a too close one."
"I must begin by saying something about the old Germany. That Germany, too, suffered from superficial judgment, because appearances and reality were not always kept apart in people's minds."
"Back then, a half-a-century ago, the situation was totally different. Economically, we were practically on our knees, and politically, we were still excluded from the community of nations. Today, in this respect, we have a totally different and much more stable basis."
"Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us."
"My people and I have come to an agreement which satisfied us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please."
"There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive."
"I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess."
"But just as haste and restlessness are typical of our present-day life, so change also takes place more rapidly than before. This applies to change in the relationships between nations as it does to change within an individual nation."
"It would make me a lot happier if I could meet up again next year with as many friends as possible from all over the world who I've met during my career. That's where the great opportunity lies, for me personally, in our role as World Cup host."
"It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past."
"Physiology and psychology cover, between them, the field of vital phenomena; they deal with the facts of life at large, and in particular with the facts of human life."
"The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions, they cease to be mind."
"For the myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious."
"The art of politics consists in knowing precisely when it is necessary to hit an opponent slightly below the belt."
"I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy."
"Voices were heard from the United States of America which made it clear that America wanted a peaceful and united Europe as a basis for mutual cooperation."
"Another adverse factor was the way the Russians received continual reinforcements from their back areas, as they fell back. It seemed to us that as soon as one force was wiped out, the path was blocked by the arrival of a fresh force."
"Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck."
"The government of the German Democratic Republic rejects secret policies. It works for the people, and only the people, so it does not need to keep secrets like the warmongers."
"Entertainment today constantly emphasises the message that things are wonderful the way they are. But there is another kind of cinema, which says that change is possible and necessary and it's up to you."
"And some day there will be nothing left of everything that has twisted my life and grieved it and filled me so often with such anguish. Some day, with the last exhaustion, peace will come and the motherly earth will gather me back home. It won't be the end of things, only a way of being born again, a bathing and a slumbering where the old and the withered sink down, where the young and new begin to breathe. Then, with other thoughts, I will walk along streets like these, and listen to streams, and overhear what the sky says in the evening, over and over and over."
"Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed."
"Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person."
"It certainly is dangerous that there are only a few clubs left in Europe that can afford to pay millions. At the end of the day however, the spectators decide the rates of pay - by watching the games and consuming the goods and services advertised on sports TV programmes."
"Hence, even in the domain of natural science the aid of the experimental method becomes indispensable whenever the problem set is the analysis of transient and impermanent phenomena, and not merely the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects."
"I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief."
"It is the element I miss in electronic music - no performance, no loving immersion. Maybe that is why I was never particularly drawn to electronic music."
"Complaining and arguing will not help. We are fully concentrating on the game against the Czechs."
"Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another."
"I expect that on the 1st of August, the SA will be once more ready for duty."
"Rid yourself of anything that is not directed toward God."
"A God is thinkable, therefore a God is also actually present."
"Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art. They are all the same absolutely."
bottom of page