Top 1200 German Quotes & Sayings - Page 20

Usually the German translators do something terrible, especially with Tom Wolfe, which is that they make it local. So if the characters are from Harlem, the translators put all this Berlin slang into their mouths, and that's just terrible. You cringe when you read that. But there really is no good solution to the problem, except learning English.

The intellectual bourgeois of the old Empire - tepid and unimaginative, mentally slow, arrogant, and incorrectly trained - has proven his incapacity to be the bearer of German culture. His benumbed world is now toppled, its spirit is overthrown, and is in the midst of being recast into a new mold.

We are saying that if the Holocaust occurred, then Europe must draw the consequences and that it is not Palestine that should pay the price for it. If it did not occur, then the Jews have to go back to where they came from. I believe that the German people today are also prisoners of the Holocaust.

Germany's greatness makes it impossible for her to do without the ocean, but the ocean also proves that even in the distance, and on its farther side, without Germany and the German Emperor, no great decision dare henceforth be taken.

My office has a view of low-cost housing, old East German prefabricated apartment buildings. It isn't an attractive view, but it's very helpful, because it reminds me to ask myself, whenever there is a decision to be made, whether the people who live there can afford our decisions.

The narrow slit through which the scientist, if he wants to be successful, must view nature constructs, if this goes on for a long time, his entire character; and, more often than not, he ends up becoming what the German language so appropriately calls a Fachidiot (professional idiot).

I loved school, although I got bored very easily. I liked literature. I loved philosophy. I didn't like math. I was good at English. I didn't like German. I was good at sports and continued to compete on all sorts of teams.

The United States is our most important ally. They helped us many times. Without the United States, the unification or German democratisation after the Nazi period would have been much more complicated, or almost impossible.

When we were negotiating the ongoing financial period in 2013, I talked myself hoarse. London and Berlin in particular insisted on reducing the budget. So we - to the applause of German journalists - made cuts to central future-oriented areas and slashed the budget for development aid, research and technology.

It was Russia, January 5, 1943, and just another icy day. Out among the city and snow, there were dead Russians and Germans everywhere. Those who remained were firing into the blank pages in front of them. Three languages interwove. The Russian, the bullets, the German.

Some of our German passengers on the ship would be crying. The Brits were the same way. They were crying, because they realized a new war was about to break out across Europe, with Hitler at the head of the goose-stepping parade.

As a child in Sydney, my German Mum and my Austrian Dad would spontaneously tell me stories about what they saw and what they did as children. It was like a piece of Europe coming into our house... Those stories led me to my writing.

In the '90s, there was a big wrestling boom in Switzerland with Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior, and all those guys. It was on television in Switzerland on a German TV station for a year or so. That's when I saw wrestling for the first time. I was in the fifth or sixth grade and was a fan of it right away.

In recent years, the largest parties have shied away from making clear statements about where they stand. That was a huge mistake. I very much welcomed the fact that German President Joachim Gauck spoke clearly at the Munich Security Conference and demanded that Germany become more engaged internationally.

I think what inspires me is in a constant state of flux...it's easier to stick to photographers and perhaps cinematographers, though the great medieval, Mannerist, and Baroque painters of Italian, Spanish, Flemish, and German origin are a constant source of inspiration, along with select modernists like Dali.

My father, Dennis Popham, was a very handsome, talented artist, and as my mother always reminds me, 'someone who had wonderful style.' He was half Samoan-German, half New Zealander, and their first date was to a Fleetwood Mac concert, which I love the thought of.

Russians call me German, Germans call me Russian, Jews call me a Christian, Christians a Jew.

But the truth of the matter is, that was fairly, fairly early on in Goebbels' 800 movies that he made in Germany. The majority of them, especially once the war got going, you hardly saw Nazi officers in it at all. They were mostly musicals and comedies and melodramas and stories of great German men from the past.

Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the worlds resources will be negotiated.

In the last 14 years Jewry has achieved positions of influence which it has grossly misused morally, financially and politically in an unheard-of manner, with the result that the German people crumbled morally, financially, and politically.

My understanding, when I think of immigration, is like... you know, this country was built on immigrants: the German, the Polish, the Italian, the Jewish, the Russians, the Eastern Europeans. So, all these people came in, and I don't know who decided like, 'No, that's it! There's a cap on it! No more people.'

When we were told Brexit meant taking back powers for Parliament, no one told my constituents this meant the French parliament and the German parliament, not our own.

I said to the German Ambassador that, as long as there was only a dispute between Austria and Serbia alone, I did not feel entitled to intervene; but that, directly it was a matter between Austria and Russia, it became a question of the peace of Europe, which concerned us all.

I'm a big fan of silent cinema and I think that before I got into the canon of European arthouse cinema, the first interesting films I liked as a kid were German expressionist silent films.

Angela Merkel did the right thing. Her decision and the extraordinary willingness of the German people to take in refugees conveyed an image of Germany that is still having positive repercussions today. Unfortunately, people in Germany are no longer seeing that.

The Montefiores have taken Australia for their own, and there is not a gold field or a sheep run from Tasmania to New South Wales that does not pay them a heavy tribute. They are the real owners of the antipodean continent. What is the good of our being a wealthy nation, if the wealth is all in the hands of German Jews?

Churchill wrote his own speeches. When a leader does that, he becomes emotionally invested with his utterances...If Churchill had had a speech write in 1940, Britain would be speaking German today.

Pep is a super coach! He is excellent. He is the best at analysing an opponent and the concept of a game. I don't know what impact he had on German football, but he left a mark on all of us at Bayern because of how he analysed and educated the players in each position and the way he taught us to play.

The years 1781 to 1793 are crucial for many reasons, but chiefly because they pose in an especially clear way the main problem of German philosophy for the next century. This is the old conflict between reason and faith which recurred during the pantheism controversy between Jacobi and Mendelssohn.

The reason given by the President in asking Congress to declare war against Germany is that the German government has declared certain war zones, within which, by the use of submarines, she sinks, without notice, American ships and destroys American lives.

I believe the friendship of the Games still exists. There is a tremendous camaraderie and atmosphere at the Olympic and Commonwealth Games - where else could you go and sit down and have breakfast with a Russian weightlifter, an East German sprinter, and an Indian fencer and talk about different cultures and problems?

As factual and thoughtful literature began to seep in, against the Nazis' will, and replace the reams of Nazi propaganda, I began to see the German Jew in his historical role, in his good as well as his bad light.

I am a German nationalist, that means I am openly committed to my Volkstrum. All of my thoughts and actions belong to it. I am a socialist. I see before me no class or rank, but rather a community of people who are connected by blood, united by language, and subject to the same collective fate.

Anti-Semitism is not based on strictly religious grounds and is not directed against the Jewish faith as such. However, all German Christians resent and denounce the fact that the Jews have been the chief advocates of atheism. They have influenced the workers' children through the Communist youth organizations, of which they are the leading spirit.

I live on the margin of just about everything. I'm a marginal person, and I think that is where I've become comfortable. I'm marginally there in my native life. I can do as much as I can, but I'm always German, too, you know, and I'm always a mother. That's my first identity, but I'm always a writer, too.

Bismarck's genius, as well as his great flaw, was the same as that of another outstanding nineteenth-century politician of the German-speaking world, Prince Clemens Metternich. Both men were artificers, able to hold off the future by building a fragile present out of pieces of the past.

In the 20th century, in the darkest period of German and European history, an insane racist ideology, born of neopaganism, gave rise to the attempt, planned and systematically carried out by the regime, to exterminate European Jews. The result has passed into history as the Shoah.

A Western writer came up to me and said, how come nobody at this demonstration spoke of German unity? I told him, because it isn't on the agenda. People were interested in having another, better GDR, another, better socialism.

It is my great good luck the words I use are English words, which means I live in a very old nation of open borders; a rich, deep, multi-layered, promiscuous universe, infused with Latin, German, French, Greek, Arabic and countless other tongues.

My family was very open. My grandfather was German and a Protestant. My father, a lawyer, was Greek-Catholic and played the violin. My mother was very religious and went to church twice a day. My grandmother was Armenian. So I was raised with three different faiths - that's why I am so open.

After the German occupation of Holland in May 1940, the last two dark years of the war I spent hiding indoors from the Nazis, eating tulip bulbs to fill the stomach and reading Kramers' book "Quantum Theorie des Elektrons und der Strahlung" by the light of a storm lamp.

We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day... Do not count days; do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed.

Neither Italian fascism nor German national "socialism" have anything in common with such a [Soviet socialistic] society, primarily because private ownership of factories, plants, lands, banks, means of transportation, etc., remain untouched there, and, therefore, capitalism in Germany and Italy remains in full force.

While foreign competitors, French or Japanese or German, merrily bid for contracts abroad, American companies find themselves tangled in a web of legislation designed to express disapproval, block trade in certain commodities, or perhaps deny resources to disfavored or hostile regimes.

The ECB puts out money that is meant to help our banks, but they do not use it to finance our businesses, but they give it to them to buy back their debt, to help French and German banks.

As for the role of France and Germany: French politics is often more self-confident then German politics due to the catastrophe in the first half of the last century. If Berlin and Paris don't agree, then it is difficult to make progress in Europe.

I grew up with WWE and New Japan, but when I started traveling to Germany, I had the chance to train with people like Christian Eckstein and Tony St. Clair. They were two of the cornerstones of the German 'beer tent' wrestling era, when they'd have 30-day tournaments in the same town.

Over a period of 20 years, German reunification has cost 2 trillion euros, or an average of 100 billion euros a year. So, we have to ask ourselves: Aren't we willing to pay a tenth of that over several years for Europe's unity?

I am imprinted with the whole sense of European history, especially German history, going back to World War I, which really destroyed all the old values and culture. My grandparents had been reasonably well-off but they became quite poor, living in an attic apartment.

There's a big difference between when I'm Tom and when I'm Conchita. Conchita uses very proper German; Tom talks in an Austrian dialect. Conchita gets mad if she is kept waiting; Tom is lazy.

English may be the fastest moving language in the world, but there are plenty of concepts, sensations and everyday occurrences which lack a pithy word to describe them. Take the clunkiness of 'the day before yesterday' and 'the day after tomorrow': German provides single words for both.

The German police were actually after me when I was first in Stoke. They had put pictures of my face on the trees in Bremen and said: 'Find this guy.' They said I had an €80 fine to pay or something. But I spoke to my lawyer and I didn't owe anything.

I could never be French, I could never become German - I shall always remain American - the essence which is in me is American mysticism just as Davies declared it when he saw those first landscapes.

Spotting a rare bird is never worth the bite of a cur. Once bitten by a German shepherd, I knew that I preferred cats, even if they are bird-killers. Life is long enough for more than one chance at a rare bird.

I'm very proud that I have learned German and Russian. Especially Russian, because of how difficult and beautiful it is and because of how much I struggled in the beginning to get my head around how it works.

There in the midst of German life is an alien and isolated race of men. Loud and self-conscious in their dress, hot-blooded and restless in their manner. An Asiatic horde on the sandy plains of Prussia. Forming among themselves a close corporation, rigorously shut off from the rest of the world.

The closer one gets to either the eastern or the southern fringe of the German-speaking world-the closer one gets, in other words, to the threatening and more numerous Slavs-the more insecure and dangerous nationalism becomes.

I cooked for the two Popes that were here. Pope Francis I cooked for and Pope Benedict before him. Pope Benedict is German. And I did a little research - his mother was a chef.

I think what is happening is I think first of all there is confidence in the U.K. economy. We're in a German rather than a Greek position in international financial markets, which is very positive and keeps our debt service costs down, and we're also beginning to see real evidence of rebalancing.

I know it's a cliche, but I see myself as a citizen of the world. I was brought up in Switzerland by German and Turkish parents but I've very much grown up in San Francisco. I have a European sense of aesthetic, but I'm also deeply steeped in the notion of change and entrepreneurship that is associated with Silicon Valley.