Top 1200 German Philosopher Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

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.

Another important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic.

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.

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.

I understand German; I can read German.

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.

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.

As a German philosopher writing in the aftermath of the Nazi regime, Marcuse understood the sleep inducing force of indoctrination, its power to make people forget and forfeit their own real interests. "The fact that the vast majority of the population accepts, and is made to accept, this society does not render it less irrational and less reprehensible," he wrote. "The distinction between true and false consciousness, real and immediate interest still is meaningful."

When I played for Hannover I had several offers, also - as I have been told - from Hamburg, Bremen and Bayern. Back then I already was a German international and Bayern would have loved to have the complete German national team.

I will employ my strength for the welfare of the German people, protect the Constitution and laws of the German people, conscientiously discharge the duties imposed on me, and conduct my affairs of office impartially and with justice to everyone.

I'd just like to see thinking come back in style. I haven't heard a new idea in eight years. Let's get ordinary people arguing and talking again. I want to trigger new circuits in their nervous systems. That's the philosopher's job and I am the most important philosopher at this time.

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.

One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.

Our thoughts fly therefore by themselves in this festive hour of our plant community, to the man whom we thank for the ressurection of our Nation: Adolf Hitler, the patron of German labour and German art.

"You cannot believe what you are saying." "Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry."

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

If Germany, my beloved fatherland, of whom you know I am proud, will not accept me, then must I, in the name of God, again make France or England richer by one capable German - and to the shame of the German nation.

The difference between Christian thinking and the non-Christian philosopher has always been at this point. The non-Christian philosopher has always said that man is normal now, but biblical Christianity says he is abnormal now.

For me, it was pretty hard to go into the studio and sing English for the first time, because I always sung in German, and we've been making music for seven years and it's always been in German.

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.

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 intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

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.

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.

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.

How I understand the philosopher - as a terrible explosive, endangering everthing... my concept of the philosopher is worlds removed from any concept that would include even a Kant, not to speak of academic "ruminants" and other professors of philosophy.

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.

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.

Don't say anything about this to anybody. Any one would say that I am trying to play the good-natured philosopher. I am neither benefactor nor philosopher, but just a human being, and my charities are the pleasantest expense I have on these journeys.

I know very well that Berlin attaches great importance to NATO and solidarity, in terms of sharing the burden. For this reason, I feel confident that the German government will take the right decision, one that serves both German and NATO interests.

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.

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.

Only a handful of Germans in the Reich had the slightest conception of the eternal and merciless struggle for the German language, German schools, and a German way of life. Only today, when the same deplorable misery is forced on many millions of Germans from the Reich, who under foreign rule dream of their common fatherland and strive, amid their longing, at least to preserve their holy right to their mother tongue, do wider circles understand what it means to be forced to fight for one's nationality.

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.

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.

To a space alien or a German Shepherd dog, two humans would be indistinguishable, just as attractive and unattractive space aliens and German Shepherd dogs are difficult for you to tell apart.

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.

I am not a German bitter-ender. I am, though, a German never-forgetter.

People stopped calling themselves Freethinkers because it was so specifically German and anything German was terribly unpopular because of the two world wars. My family became Unitarians instead - it's the same sort of thing.

I'm definitely a fan of giving a German-speaking team a German-speaking coach.

Temporarily in 1934 I became a department head in the German Labor Front and dealt with the improvement of labor conditions in German factories. Then I was in charge of public works on the staff of Hess. I gave up both these activities in 1941.

If we remind ourselves of the fact that every fifth American today rightly points and perhaps also with a certain degree of pride to his German ancestry or her German ancestry, we can safely say that we, indeed, share common roots.

English policy may not yet have made the definite decision to attack us; but it doubtless wishes, by all and every means, even the most extreme, to hinder every further expansion of German international influence and of German maritime power.

A philosopher may try to prove the truth of something he believed before he was a philosopher, but even if he succeeds, his belief never regain the untroubled character, and the settled place in his mind, which it had at first.

The difference between a poet and a philosopher is that the poet sees logically and describes basically the beauty whereas the philosopher defines the basics and shows the beauty of logics.

I'm not an academic philosopher, and don't agree with the way the universities approach the subject. I'm a philosopher only in the very loose sense of someone interested in wisdom and well-being attained through reason. But I'm as interested in psychoanalysis and art as I am in philosophy.

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.

I knew German history well, and out of my experiences in the rest of the world I believed to know the German kind; therefore I never doubted that, although for the time being all indications were against it, one day a change would come.

The full history of the interlocking participation of the Imperial German Government and international finance in the destruction of the Russian Empire is not yet written...It is not a mere coincidence that at the notorious meeting held at Stockholm in 1916, between the former Russian Minister of the Interior, Protopopoff, and the German Agents, the German Foreign Office was represented by Mr. Warburg, whose two brothers were members of the international banking firm, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, of which the late Mr. Jacob Schiff was a senior member.

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

In the late 1980s the amount of German films was down to four or five percent of the market, and the remaining 95 percent were American. It is now 20 to 30 percent German productions.

It's not difficult to sing in German; it's difficult to feel in German. This takes time. It's a culture.

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.

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

If a philosopher is not a man, he is anything but a philosopher; he is above all a pedant, and a pedant is a caricature of a man.

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.

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.

Men are not philosophers, but are rather very foolish children, who, by reason of their partiality, see everything in the most absurd manner, and are the victims at all times of the nearest object. There is even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. Our experience, our perception is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts and in succession, that is, with every truth a certain falsehood.

This book is the best treatment of the best American Marxist philosopher-and the best philosopher to emerge from American slums. Young Sidney Hook is essential reading for anyone interested in democratic theory and practice in America.

I decided to do philosophy at university, with a view to becoming a professional philosopher. Being a rather unstable character, at some points I had doubts about becoming a professional philosopher, but the example of two of my teachers, Ezequiel de Olaso and Juan Rodriguez Larreta, made me confirm my original decision.