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Quotes by German Authors
"The first task of the association must therefore be to form the young members."
"The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. And such a faculty can be found only in rational beings."
"Finally there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms or postulates, or in a word primary principles, which cannot be proved and have no need of proof."
"And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own."
"While the river of life glides along smoothly, it remains the same river; only the landscape on either bank seems to change."
"If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself."
"The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs."
"We do not build speedways, but roads which correspond to the character of the German landscape."
"My most profound confidence is however based upon the fact that at the head of Germany there stands a man by his entire development, his desires, and striving can only have been destined by fate to lead our people into a brighter future."
"The results of ethnic psychology constitute, at the same time, our chief source of information regarding the general psychology of the complex mental processes."
"I worked as a lawyer; as a member of the teaching staff of a technical college; and then I worked principally as legal adviser to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party."
"Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality."
"Down below the broad, roaring waves of the sea break against the deep foundation of the rock. But high above the mountain, the sea, and the peaks of rock the eternal ornamentation blooms silently from the dark depths of the universe."
"I called the world of phenomena an illusion, I called my eyes and my tongue and accident, valueless phenomena. No, that is all over; I have awakened, I have really awakened and have just been born today."
"[representative government is] deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament."
"The true law of economics is chance, and we learned people arbitrarily seize on a few moments and establish them as laws."
"Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form."
"Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy."
"If we would answer the question of the existence of the Evil then we would not be sinners, we could make something else responsible."
"Material loss can be made up through renewed labor, but the moral wrong which has been inflicted upon the conquered peoples, in the peace dictates, leaves a burning scar on the people's conscience."
"I wanted to improve the suburban office building; to create a great urban space in a suburban environment with all that implies about interaction, collaboration and creativity."
"The musician writes for the orchestra what his inner voice sings to him; the painter rarely relies without disadvantage solely upon the images which his inner eye presents to him; nature gives him his forms, study governs his combinations of them."
"If I would take a job with a professional league, I need to be ready."
"In the end one loves one's desire and not what is desired."
"This man, although he appeared so humble and embarrassed in his air and manners, and passed so unheeded, had inspired me with such a feeling of horror by the unearthly paleness of his countenance, from which I could not avert my eyes, that I was unable longer to endure it."
"At such times Daddy, Mummy and Margot leave me cold. I wander from one room to another, downstairs and up again, feeling like a songbird whose wings have been clipped and who is hurling himself in utter darkness against the bars of his cage. "Go outside, laugh, and take a breath of fresh air," a voice cries within me, but I don't even feel a response any more; I go and lie on the divan and sleep, to make the time pass more quickly, and the stillness and terrible fear, because there is no way of killing them."
"Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live."
"Yes, influences are enriching, and they can be found in every work of art, even the most original."
"A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love."
"The existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set in motion."
"In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases."
"All human wisdom works and has worries and grief as reward."
"At Bloomington, Indiana, I was invited to listen to music written in quarter tones for four harps and voices. I had to go out to be sick."
"I think the younger generation, the people poised to dominate the workforce, are more socially conscious. They are more demanding in terms of environment and how that environment contributes to their life."
"For me, half the joy of achieving has been the struggle and the fight, the pitting myself against the world and all its competition - and winning."
"I think the great artists, especially in literature, have always thought with the heart."
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