German Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

But in the great hour Heaven sent the German people a great man, Herr von Cuno.

This pride of race is a quality which the German, fundamentally, does not possess. The reason for this is that for these last three centuries the country has been torn by internal dissension and religious wars and has been subjected to a variety of foreign influences, to the influence, for example, of Christianity—for Christianity is not a natural religion for the Germans, but a religion that has been imported and which strikes no responsive chord in their hearts and is foreign to the inherent genius of the race.

So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A woman that is like a German clock, Still a-repairing, ever out of frame, And never going aright, being a watch, But being watched that it may still go right!

William Shakespeare

German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it's almost like a meeting.

Perhaps dandruff is the excreta of the mind the quantity of this material being directly proportional to the amount of reading one indulges in. A book on German metaphysics would thus easily ruin a dress suit.

In early times some sufferer had to sit up with a toothache, and he put in the time inventing the German language.

An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur.

It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of the world, whatever may be the explanation of the next.

For England must not fall: it would mean an inundation of Russian & German political degradations which would envelop the globe & steep it in a sort of Middle-Age night & slaverly which would last till Christ comes again - which I hope he will not do; he made trouble enough before.

Goethe is an altogether practical Poet. He is in his works what the English are in their wares: highly simple, neat, convenient and durable. He has done in German Literature what Wedgwood did in English Manufacture. He has, like the English, a natural turn for Economy, and a noble Taste acquired by Understanding. Both these are very compatible, and have a near affinity in the chemical sense.

If there is one instance in which a foreign policy I pursued met with unambiguous failure, it was my policy on German reunification.

Margaret Thatcher

I once heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.

And Prince Bismack was even more specific. One third, he said, of the students of German universities broke down from overwork, another third broked down from dissipation, and the other third ruled Germany.

John F. Kennedy

By its sudden collapse, … the proud German army has once again proved the truth of the saying, 'The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet'.

Winston Churchill

A German is someone who cannot tell a lie without believing it himself.

Theodor W. Adorno

The more the linguistic Babel corroded and disorganized parliament, the closer drew the inevitable hour of the disintegration of this Babylonian Empire, and with it the hour of freedom for my German-Austrian people.

I will reflect a thousand times over before I allow the German Volk to become entangled in agreements whose consequences are not readily evident.

This game is repeated again and again, and in it the role of the so-called 'German princes' is just as miserable as that of the Jews themselves. These lords were really God's punishment for their beloved peoples and find their parallels only in the various ministers of the present time.

The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. from "Disappearance of Literature

There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done.

J. R. R. Tolkien

It is quite clear that the German and Chinese revolutions in case of victory would have changed the face of Europe and Asia, and perhaps of the whole world.

German equality of rights is the prerequisite for any participation on Germany's part in international conventions and agreements.

We have made it possible, without gold and without foreign exchange, to maintain the value of the German mark. Behind the German mark stands the German capacity for work, while some foreign countries, suffocated by gold, have been compelled to devalue their currencies.

The term Mammal has no exact equivalent in the true vernacular of any modern language, the word itself, like its equivalents, the French Mammifere and the German Saugetheir, being entirely artificial.

Thomas Jefferson