Top 1200 German Quotes & Sayings

More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.

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.

what is a german? to say a man is a german, what is that? does it tell you if he is a good man? or a bad man? no, my friend, it tells you nothing about a man to say he is german. a man must think what he is inside. what he is on the outside, how can this matter?

I always thought those World War II films with German people speaking English with German accents was weird.

German militarism and Nazism have devastated twice in our generation the lands of German neighbors.

My grandmother was German. She didn't teach any of her children German. She really wanted them to be American. And now, she's since passed away, I get so frustrated sometimes. I'm like, "Oh, Oma, why didn't you teach your kids German?" My dad would have spoken German to me from birth, and I would have spoken German.

With every wish to take Europe forward with a German-French nucleus, the proposals must always fit with German interests.

There is a denial of the value of the individual. Christianity affirms the value of each individual soul. Nazism denies it. The individual is sacrificed to the idol of the German Leader, German State or the German race. The ordinary citizen is allowed to hear and think only as the rulers decree.

There is something very powerful about German music. That's why I chose German music with a European meaning for the day of my election.

Half of us are partly German! Half our language and culture, generally, in Anglo-Saxon terms, is German.

Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country.

I studied German at school. I lived in Berlin for two years and had a German girlfriend for five years, so I don't find speaking German particularly difficult. Singing was slightly more difficult.

My father read Günter Grass. He introduced me to German literature. I believe the first book I read by a German author was from Grass. After that, Thomas Mann accompanied me for a few years during my literature studies. I tried again and again to read the original German text, but I never really succeeded.

There are about 100 German companies in Nigeria, and German investors have earned a lot of respect from Nigeria because of the quality of the manufactured goods they produce, especially machinery.

From a German point of view, German-American and European-American relations are a pillar of our foreign policy.

My wife is German, so I know something about German energy policy.

Donald Trump is the grandson of German immigrants. Don't worry. The last time a German guy with crazy hair took over a country, everything turned out fine.

Today, for a Jew who writes in the German language, it is totally impossible to make a living. In no group do I see as much misery, disappointment, desperation and hopelessness as in Jewish writers who write in German.

The French need a thrashing. If the Prussians win, the centralization of state power will be useful for the centralization of the German working class. German predominance would also transfer the center of gravity of the workers' movement in Western Europe from France to Germany, and one has only to compare the movement in the two countries from 1866 until now to see that the German working class is superior to the French both theoretically and organizationally.

The German people of today bear no guilt. Why are the German people not permitted the right to defend themselves? Why are the crimes of one group emphasized so greatly, instead of highlighting the great German cultural heritage? Why should the Germans not have the right to express their opinion freely?

I did that all the more, if I may say so, because I was aware of the fact that there is an inclination to go to extremes in German people, and in the German character generally.

I am closer to the pacifist side, in that I think that the British response to German aggression, which was to try to starve the Continent into a state of revolt and to terrorize German civilians with bombing raids, was part of the total catastrophe.

When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.

I feel very German - and who can make himself a judge over what is German and what is not - in my ideas and the ideas of my spiritual brothers of German origin.

One day I heard a speech of Hitler. In this speech he said that the German factory worker and the German labourer must make common cause with the German intellectual worker.

German is more familiar now since I live part of the year in Rome and part in the German part of Switzerland. But it's not difficult to sing in German; it's difficult to feel in German. This takes time. It's a culture.

I must say to you that my intensions for instance doing German, it is because Victoria de los Angeles is nothing to do with wanting to be like a German singer.

I definitely won't play the bad German, the Nazi German, here in Hollywood or wherever.

I'm into all things German. Everything that I own is German. As far as cars go, anyway.

The way some German politicians have lashed out at Greece when the country fell into the crisis has left deep wounds there. I was just as shocked by the banners of protesters in Athens that showed the German chancellor in a Nazi uniform.

But as a German - and I am German-born - we Germans are condemned once again to be radical revisionists.

Jacob is a German Shepherd. (I have never understood why they aren't called German Sheepdogs. What do the Germans call shepherds?)

The Haavara agreement allowed the escape of well-to-do German Jews in exchange for the liquidation of their property and the purchase and export of German goods to break the boycott of Germany's Nazi-controlled economy.

No other German writer of comparable stature has been a more extreme critic of German nationalism than Nietzsche.

All German women are beautiful. It's not for nothing that we talk of the German "Fräuleinwunder." You don't get this word in any other language.

Very little changed fundamentally, except that the proud German soldier had turned into a defeated bundle of misery and the great German army had disintegrated.

And another thing about German symphonic development. I tell you, our cold kvass soup is a horror to the Germans, and yet we eat it with pleasure. And their cold cherry soup is a horror to us, and yet it sends a German into ecstacy. In short, symphonic development is just like German philosophy and soup-all worked out and systematized. When a German thinks, he reasons his way to a conclusion. Our Russian brother, on the other hand, starts with a conclusion and then might amuse himself with some reasoning.

Do not count the days, do not count the miles. Count only the Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your old mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill.

I understand German; I can read German.

German economic salvation has been brought about solely through the efforts of the German people and the experience they have gained. Countries abroad have contributed nothing to this.

What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam.

If I can send the flower of the German nation into the hell of war without the smallest pity for the shedding of precious German blood, then surely I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin.

The phrase, 'Emancipation of Women' is only an invention of the Jewish intellect and its content is stamped with the same spirit. In the really good periods of German life the German woman never needed to emancipate herself.

Hitler was no inexorable product of a German 'special path', no logical culmination of long-term trends in specifically German culture and ideology. Nor was he a mere 'accident' in the course of German history.

As a German citizen, as a German professor, and as a political person, I hold it to be not only my right but also my moral duty to take part in the shaping of our German destiny, to expose and oppose obvious wrongs.

Though German art can never be Bavarian, but simply German, yet Munich is the capital of this German Art; here, under shelter of a Prince who kindles my enthusiasm, to feel myself a native and member of the people was, to me, the homeless wanderer, a deep, a genuine need.

Religion and race belong together. German man can only assimilate religious faith and religious thought with a German mind and in a German way. We must not think we can come to God except through our Volk....Wherever our blood rises in protest we act immorally, even though others may try to prove it to be moral.

I call on God Almighty to have mercy on the German people. More than two million German soldiers went to their death for the fatherland before me. I follow now my sons - all for Germany.

It's difficult to beat German teams. They don't play as attractively as, for example, you have it in the English league or in the Spanish league. But to break a German team is not very easy.

My grandparents were born in England but spoke German and had a German name.

The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648, was a series of conflicts that became the last great struggle of religious wars in Europe. It was fought almost exclusively on German soil...but before the war ended, it involved most of the nations of Europe. The underlying cause of the war was the deep-seated hostility between the German Protestants and German Catholics - with the Jesuits and Cardinal Richelieu, who was the real ruler of France, fanning the fires to accomplish their ends.

After 15 years of work I have achieved, as a common German soldier and merely with my fanatical willpower, the unity of the German nation, and have freed it from the death sentence of Versailles.

America took me into her bosom when there was no longer a country worthy of the name, but in my heart I am German - German in my soul.

In order to pass the time I told him the story of the German who ate the other German whom he’d met on the internet.

I would love to learn other languages, maybe French? My uncle speaks German so maybe also German? Chinese seems to be too difficult.

The larger the German body, the smaller the German bathing suit and the louder the German voice issuing German demands and German orders to everybody who doesn't speak German. For this, and several other reasons, Germany is known as 'the land where Israelis learned their manners'.

Americans and British respondents don't want to let the German people off the hook. They make the case that if you get rid of Hitler, some other leader apart from Hitler would have emerged and, because of the structural constant of German nationalism, would have exploited German national feeling and produce the same kind of events no matter what.

Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate - healthy virile hate - for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German.

There is nothing false or arrogant about German pride in German technical and business skills.

When has there ever been a government in German history that came to the people and revealed its detailed plans for the coming years? That could not happen before, since German governments planned war and conquest.