Top 100 In German Quotes
#1. God grant that this is the work of the Communists. You are witnessing the beginning of a great new epoch in German history. This fire is the beginning.
Adolf Hitler
#2. 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.
Cecilia Bartoli
#4. There is nothing false or arrogant about German pride in German technical and business skills.
Douglas Hurd
#5. I'm homeless, in a funny way. My culture I think is completely rooted in German 19th century music I suppose.
Hans Zimmer
#6. I think that, certainly, most of my operatic roles are in German. I think it happened because, of course, I was lucky in that I was invited to sing, first of all, my operatic debut in Berlin at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, which was West Berlin at the time.
Jessye Norman
#7. A few metres ahead, a young soldier with a belly wound was pleading in Russian. Peter couldn't understand any of it - except of course the one word that was the same in German. 'Mama...
Robert Hirzer
#8. 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.
Walter Ulbricht
#9. There's more than a few remnants left in German welfare policy today. Many Germans eagerly condemn Hitler's fascism but won't examine the other reasons why the Third Reich succeeded for a season.
Suzanne Fields
#10. Social Darwinism had continued to flourish in German. Together with Mendelian genetics, it was widely thought to provide a scientific basis for the eugenic 'Racial Hygiene' movement.
Jonathan Glover
#11. I still speak to my parents only in German, and I have endless family over there.
Peter Hermann
#12. We cannot live in a bubble, Mr. Mundy. Comfortable ignorance is not a solution. In German student societies that I was not permitted to join, they made a toast: 'Better to be a salamander, and live in the fire.'" After
John Le Carre
#14. In language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English?
Marlene Dietrich
#15. It's quite a famous story that takes place on Christmas Eve, and the Germans, French, and Scottish are trying to make peace one night and they bury their dead and they play football. I play a German opera singer, in German, which I never have so I am really excited about that.
Diane Kruger
#16. As Einstein once wrote (more ringingly in German than in this English translation by one of us [DG]) to honor Isaac Newton: Look unto the stars to teach us How the master's thoughts can reach us Each one follows Newton's math Silently along its path.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#17. In German. I'm more sensitized to the details, to the emotions. In English, I wouldn't detect as much nuance.
Michael Haneke
#18. What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.
Thomas Mann
#19. Heimat. The word mean home in German, the place where one was born. But the term also conveys a subtler nuance, a certain tenderness. One's Heimat is not merely a matter of geography; it is where one's heart lies.
Jenna Blum
#20. In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by "Not so good.
David Sedaris
#21. The mere fact that my comments have caused such strong protests, although I'm not a European, and also the fact that I have been compared with certain persons in German history indicates how charged with conflict the atmosphere for research is in your country. Here in Iran you needn't worry.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
#22. I write the story that nobody reads. Someday, I'm going to write it in German to see if anyone notices.
Rick Reilly
#23. 'The White Ribbon' had to be in German because of the subject matter, that was clear. But in the case of 'Amour,' it could have taken place in any country.
Michael Haneke
#24. thoughts about them living alone in German-occupied Shedlitz
Amira Keidar
#25. [On school uniforms] Don't these schools do enough damage making all these kids think alike, now they have to make them look alike too? It's not a new idea, either. I first saw it in old newsreels from the 1930s, but it was hard to understand because the narration was in German.
George Carlin
#26. German can take a lot more pathos than English can. When you say "pathetic" in English it's a disparaging term, but when you say "pathetisch" in German it's just a description, not necessarily negative. That says a lot already.
Daniel Kehlmann
#27. Something new has happened: For the first time in German history our fatherland is guided by a plan that considers only the needs of the people, and aims at building prosperity and reconstructing of our fatherland.
Walter Ulbricht
#28. Eddie Izzard is doing his show in French ... Will he be able to fake ad-lib as well in other languages? He's been speaking French for a while now, but he's talking about doing his act in German. Haven't the German people suffered enough?
Andy Kindler
#29. As the Prussian historian Treitschke later complained, the proponents of free trade in Hamburg had 'in German fashion made out of necessity not just a virtue but a theory'.
Richard J. Evans
#30. Art and science were in German hands. Apart from the new artistic trash, which might easily have been produced by a negro tribe, all genuine artistic inspiration came from the German section of the population.
Adolf Hitler
#31. 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.
Stefan Zweig
#32. English has a better way with colloquialisms. It has colloquialisms that are colorful and expressive but not too heavy or distracting. In German, if you use colloquialisms, it quickly descends into some kind of dialect literature.
Daniel Kehlmann
#33. When I first began to combine letters other than Hebrew, I read every book in German that came my way, and from these I certainly received according to the nature of my soul.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon
#34. 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.
Albert Speer
#35. I want to see religious instruction and sermons held in German in the mosques. The ideal, in my view, would be for imams to be trained in Germany and to speak our language, just as the Roman Catholic Church now holds mass in German and gave up Latin long ago.
Wolfgang Schauble
#36. I find Spanish really difficult. They speak so quickly, whereas in German it's very clear what they're saying. It's easier to repeat.
Eliot Paulina Sumner
#37. In German science, we have a special problem. We lose talented women at the time they get pregnant. Some of it occurs because they are encouraged - by their husbands, bosses and the government - to take long maternity leaves.
Christiane Nusslein-Volhard
#38. I attempted to do yoga in German, and it was not particularly successful. So at that time, I started thinking about the idea of just movement and how I could move to de-stress.
Rashid Johnson
#39. I actually speak fluent English and Spanish and ... I dabble in a couple of languages, but I'm not fluent in German, Russian and Arabic.
Cote De Pablo
#40. Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#41. G.W.F. Hegel. "He's perfect," Weishaupt wrote ... "Unlike Kant, who makes sense only in German, this man doesn't make sense in any language.
Robert Anton Wilson
#42. Occasionally I write a small piece or the odd lecture in English, and I teach in English, but my fiction is always written in German.
W.G. Sebald
#43. This is the pain that will inform all other pains from now on. You have lost your mother. That is the primal pain, what we call it in German. There will never be another pain like this pain. You cannot ready yourself for it because it is unimaginable.
David Samuel Levinson
#45. If there is one thing we admire about National Socialism it's the fact that it has succeeded, for the first time in German politics, in the complete mobilisation of human stupidity."30
Volker Ullrich
#46. The alienation effect in German epic theater is achieved not only through the actors, but also through music (chorus and song) andsets (transparencies, film strips, etc.). Its main purpose is to place the staged events in their historical context.
Bertolt Brecht
#47. I said it in Hebrew - I said it in Dutch - I said it in German and Greek; But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much) That English is what you speak!
Lewis Carroll
#48. 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
#49. I don't like traditions, I am very personal, very independent, I don't like intimate ladies, I mean in German lieder there's a lot of copy, a lot of imitation, a lot of tradition, and this I have put it aside.
Victoria De Los Angeles
#50. In German, a young lady has no sex, but a turnip has
Mark Twain
#51. I really want to do a film in another language. My dad's from Germany, so it'd be really cool to do a film in German. I'm not quite fluent, but I can get there. And my accent's pretty good. I wouldn't feel too out of my element.
Kirsten Dunst
#52. A gigantic crowd of one million persons was gathered on the Maifeld to hear the two fascist dictators speak their pieces. Mussolini, orating in German, was carried away by the deafening applause - and by Hitler's flattering words.
William L. Shirer
#53. Tell someone you love them today, because life is short, but shout it at them in German, because life is also terrifying and confusing.
Anonymous
#54. ... no biography of his existed in German even though sales of his books were rising in Germany as well as the rest of Europe and even in the United States, which likes vanished writers (vanished writers or millionaire writers) or the legend of vanished writers ...
Roberto Bolano
#55. Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in French. Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German. Toll explained to Volkonski in Russian. Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence.
Leo Tolstoy
#57. 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.
Fritz Sauckel
#58. In effect, I was asking that if Russia mobilized against Austria, the German Government, who had been supporting the Austrian demand on Serbia, should ask Austria to consider some modification of her demands, under the threat of Russian mobilization.
Edward Grey
#59. It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them flapping around in your head same as so much drawn butter.
Mark Twain
#60. My family history, like that of many Polish, German and Jewish families from Central Europe in the 20th century, is complex.
Donald Tusk
#61. German businesspeople have invested a great deal in our country, and trade is flourishing. We want to speed up economic cooperation. Your country is a large, important provider of aid, and it has done a great deal to reduce the poverty of many Vietnamese.
Nguyen Minh Triet
#62. The mixture of Sarmatic and German blood had contributed to improve the features of the Alani, to whiten their swarthy complexions, and to tinge their hair with a yellowish cast, which is seldom found in the Tartar race.
Edward Gibbon
#63. The German stamp on Wisconsin endures in the state's commitment to efficient agriculture, hard work, education, culture, and to good citizenship and political freedom - all of which were an integral part of the German immigrant's language.
Richard H. Zeitlin
#64. Altogether one quarter of German territory was lost in 1945, territory which had for many centuries belonged to Germany.
Neil MacGregor
#65. My grandmother was German. She was an immigrant, and my great grandfather fought in World War I and was stationed in France.
Lisa Papademetriou
#66. I spent a little time in Germany as a schoolboy learning German, and it's a country I knew very well, spent a lot of time in. I knew the history very well. I've always wanted to do a piece of work about the post-war period, of one sort or another.
Stephen Daldry
#67. I'd like to set a story in Australia, but I would need to feel confident my German and U.S. readers, for example, would stay with me.
Michael Robotham
#68. The German Reich is a Republic, and whoever doesn't believe it gets one in the neck.
Alfred Doblin
#69. It's funny, isn't it," Miss Woolf whispered in Ursula's ear, "how much German music we listen to. Great beauty transcends all. Perhaps after the war it will heal all too.
Kate Atkinson
#70. "Even Dwarfs Started Small," Calla replied immediately. "In the original German: Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen."
Maura winced, though Blue couldn't tell if it was at the movie or at Calla's accent.
Maggie Stiefvater
#71. Over 30 years ago, Airbus was founded by a European consortium of French, German, and later Spanish and British companies to compete in the large commercial aircraft industry with U.S. companies.
Norm Dicks
#72. I'd rather have a German Division in front of me than a French one behind.
George S. Patton
#73. More reforms will give more impetus to German industries to invest in India. German companies want to be treated on par with Indian companies, and creation of an equitable market is crucial for investments.
Angela Merkel
#74. German writers in the late 18th century were the first to uphold a prickly, literary nationalism, in reaction to the then dominance and prestige of French literature.
Pankaj Mishra
#75. Rainer Maria Rilke was admittedly not a Dockers tagger, but a sort of European equivalent: a German poet - in many respects, a charlatan masquerading as a genius who turned out to be a genius.
Richard Flanagan
#76. 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.
Gustav Krupp
#77. Having people like that in your service degrades such service, when they are going around the world like beggars." Such was the advice from her Majesty, Empress of the German Empire, on the subject of hiring Wolfgang Mozart.
Robert Spaethling
#78. Whatever music sounds like, I am glad to say it does not sound in the smallest degree like German.
Oscar Wilde
#79. The phlegamtic female is a weepy, bug-eyed, fat, lumpy, fleshy German. She looks like a sack of flour. She is born in order to become a mother-in-law. That is her whole ambition.
Anton Chekhov
#80. The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
#81. German test pilot Ernst Canter noted in his logbook that while in 1910 he flew at a height of eighty feet, two years later he was ascending to almost 5,000.
Max Hastings
#82. I write entirely in English; Tagalog chauvinists chide me for this. I feel no guilt in doing so. But I am sad that I cannot write in my native Ilokano. History demanded this; if it isn't English I am using now, I would most probably be writing in Spanish like Rizal, or even German or Japanese.
F. Sionil Jose
#83. I think school is so important. I was good student. A rebel, but I did well in my studies. I don't close myself to anything. I liked reading and I still love learning. I loved history and German.
Bruno Tonioli
#84. I beg you, no matter what happens, no matter where you go in life or how many millions you make, no matter anything, I beg you: never buy a German car.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#85. Paine and Joel Barlow attempted to change Jefferson's mind, urging him to settle thrifty German immigrants in the new lands and to permit black families to travel from other states to acquire their own land there, but the sugar interest triumphed,
Christopher Hitchens
#86. When German companies take over firms in India, it is seen as normal. When an Indian buys one or two firms in Germany, that is something special.
Tulsi Tanti
#87. That cat was a spy. You had to take a pot shot at it. It was a very clever German midget dressed up in a cheap fur coat.
J.D. Salinger
#88. Museums collect what's important in their respective countries. In Berlin's National Gallery, however, this isn't the case. They're interested neither in me nor the other usual suspects. It's simply a German reality.
Georg Baselitz
#89. When Hitler declared war on the United States, he was betting that German soldiers, raised up in the Hitler Youth, would always out fight American soldiers, brought up in the Boy Scouts. He lost that bet. The Boy Scouts had been taught how to figure their way out of their own problems.
Stephen E. Ambrose
#90. The German leaders, said Winston Churchill, turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia.
Robert K. Massie
#91. If I were king of the world, babies born in airplanes, balloons and blimps would, instead of choosing to be German, Maldivian or American, all get special heavenly blue passports with a stork on the cover labeled 'Sky Baby' - and they'd be allowed to come and go anywhere they please.
Robert Krulwich
#92. In July 2011, U.S. Soccer announced that they'd fired Bob Bradley and hired Jurgen Klinsmann as head coach. Jurgen had once been a world-class German striker; now he was regarded as a successful, if controversial, coach.
Tim Howard
#93. The previous year it had taken England all their time to beat the full German team in an international and I had taken with me the programme from that match.
Dixie Dean
#94. The reason these paintings are destined for New York is not because I am disappointed about a lack of German interest, but because MoMA asked me, and because I consider it to be the best museum in the world.
Gerhard Richter
#95. That's it! said Jo to herself, when she at length discovered that genuine good will toward one's fellow men could beautify and dignify even a stout German teacher, who shoveled in his dinner, darned his own socks, and was burdened with the name of Bhaer.
Louisa May Alcott
#96. In order to provide the German housewife, above all mothers of many children ... with tangible relief from her burdens, the Fuhrer has commissioned me to bring into the Reich from the eastern territories some four to five hundred thousand select, healthy, and strong girls.
Fritz Sauckel
#97. 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.
Markus Zusak
#98. [Kurt Cobain] had a lot of German in him. Some Irish. But no Jew. I think that if he had had a little Jew he would have [expletive] stuck it out.
Courtney Love
#99. I'm 16 now, I was 15 when it happened ... and the encryption code wasn't in fact written by me, but written by the German member. There seems to be a bit of confusion about that part.
Jon Johansen
#100. It is the soldier and the army, not parliamentary majorities and decisions, that have welded the German Empire together. I put my trust in the army.
Wilhelm II
