German Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

In Germany, the judicial system has been the whore of the German princes for centuries.

When someone asked Bonhoeffer whether he shouldn't join the German Christians in order to work against them from within, he answered that he couldn't. 'If you board the wrong train,' he said, 'it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.

The German language 'speaks Being', while all the others merely 'speak of Being'.

Martin Heidegger

The great German scholar Helmut Thielicke once said that a person who speaks to this hour's need will always be skirting the edge of heresy, but only the person who risks those heresies can gain the truth.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Johann Gottfried Herder boldly proclaimed this idea, asserting that each age and every people embody ideals and capacities peculiar to themselves, thus allowing a fuller and more complete expression of the multiform potentialities of humankind than could otherwise occur. Herder expressly denied that one people or civilization was better than another. They were just different, in the same way that the German language was different from the French.

William Hardy McNeill

The eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant had conjectured that Messier's nebulae were distant "island universes" outside our Milky Way galaxy, but many scientists in the early twentieth century disagreed.

When the ultimate case is discussed — deployment of the German military — it should be Germany can neither answer 'no' out of principle or give an automatic 'yes.'

I don't think it's right to compare German gullibility to American gullibility by pointing out, for example, that lots of Americans falsely believe Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 attacks. There is a qualitative difference between believing Saddam was behind an attack on America and believing that the American government was behind an attack on America. It is at least plausible that Saddam had something to do with it, even though he didn't. The idea that the U.S. government committed that deed is insane.

If Thomas Mann counts as the greatest German writer of this century, writing makes no sense at all. Anyone who follows him is already lost as far as I'm concerned.

It is clear to me that the German nation will achieve new creative energy only by liberating itself from Christianity...

Richard Strauss

I have gained a lot from my German teachers and philosophers and I acknowledge this debt whole heartedly but it does not mean that others have not contributed to the growth of my ideas. I have been influenced in much the same way by thoughts of Indian, Swiss, English and American teachers and educational philosophers. I always treat truth and discretion as my lost property and pick it up wherever I find it.

Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German.

Shortly after 9/11 a French spokesman for the activist group ATTAC quoted the adage: "He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind." French prime minister Lionel Jospin seemed to be pointing in this direction when he asked, "What lesson are the Americans going to draw from what has happened?" The lesson, Jospin indicated, should be for the U.S. to moderate her unilateralism. For Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Bishops' Conference, the lesson to be drawn from terrorism was that "the West must not seek to dominate the rest of the world."

Jean-François Revel

It's hard to decipher this game. It's been a very good German performance, but Ian? You cannot underestimate how bad Brazil have been today, it's like? It's like amateur hour watching them. But, their attitude has just been appalling. I know, I keep saying appalling. Because, I'm running out words. They've just given in. They've just completely given in, actually trying to run around and play football.

Steve McManaman

The one great element in continuing the success of an offensive is maintaining the momentum. This was lost last fall when shortages caused by the limitation of port facilities made it impossible to get sufficient supplies to the armies when they approached the German border.

George Marshall

In my eighteenth year, my father sent me to the University of Gottingen. The first winter I did not leave the Anatomical School, and although I gave myself up to the most intense study, I willingly entered into all the gaities and amusements so much sought by German students, but avoided carefully debaucheries of any kind; they gave me the cognomen, Half Benommist, owing to my puerile look and feeble and weak voice. Unzer and Ebeling, two students in physic, took me under their powerful protection, and extricated me out of many scrapes.

When a Russian pig has to be beaten, it would be the ordinary German worker who would have to do it.

If a German or an Austrian, a Greek or a Bashibazouk, had composed Gerontius, the whole world would have by now admitted its qualities.

Chairman Of Military Tribunal: What would you do if you saw a German soldier trying to violate your sister?
Strachey: I would try to get between them.

Lytton Strachey

In war we are all equal, but among a thousand good men, a bullet hit an irreplaceable one... We painters know well that with the loss of his harmony, the color in German art will become many shades paler..

German Nazism could not have succeeded in establishing itself except as a result of the theoretical contributions of Fichte, Goethe and Nietzsche, coupled with the ingenious and mighty leadership of Hitler and his comrades.

Abul A'la Maududi

But American nationalism has been conditioned, to a large extent, by the "indoctrination" of the children of immigrants, inevitably coupled with a certain denigration of the Old World. Any German, or Italian, or American gentleman will naturally defend his country against patently unjust accusations—loyalty demands this; but he will not try to convince others that his nation has the highest qualities in the world, the most gifted inventors, the most profound philosophers, the best writers, the finest painters, the fastest trains, the most beautiful women. (This uncouth boasting is reserved for the traveling salesman after a third drink, or the likes of a National Socialist or a Russian Communist.)

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

An evil fate befall German efforts to defend the ideal of liberty in general and in the field of economics in particular, with the result that today I am almost the only survivor of a generation that set out in the wake of the First World War to devote all its energies to the preservation of a civilised society, a generation that set itself the task to build a better society in a systematic fashion and to learn to understand, an to some extent defend, a tradition that had civilised the world.

Friedrich Hayek

I still carry the marks on my body of what those "German supermen" did to me then. I was sentenced to death.

The statement that 'God is dead' comes from Nietzsche and has recently been trumpeted abroad by some German and American theologians. But the good Lord has not died of this; He who dwells in the heaven laughs at them.