Untier German Quotes

The East German manages to combine a Teutonic capacity for bureauracy with a Russian capacity for infinite delay ~ Goronwy Rees

he guessed this was a Welsh regiment. The flare died. Walter leaped to his feet and ran, heading for the German side. The sentry would be unable to see for a few seconds, his vision spoiled by the flare. Walter ran faster than he ever had, expecting the rifle to fire again at any moment. In half a minute he came to the British wire and dropped gratefully to his knees. He crawled rapidly forward through a gap. Another flare went up. ~ Ken Follett

I'm not a World War II buff. I know a little bit about it, I was taught the other side of the story in school, so it was unfamiliar to me, the idea of a German resistance, and yet it was considerable. ~ Bill Nighy

The German and the Brazilian market is small. When we went to France they know a lot more, than just the American comics. The audience there was much different. ~ Gabriel Ba

It was not so much rebellion that fueled the German youth movement (as it did in the American youth movement of the 1960s); rather, it was romanticism. ~ Andrew Root

I certainly know German colleagues in the U.S. who try to be Americans, try to melt into Americanism, even before they get married and become American citizens. But I've never tried that. ~ Bernhard Schlink

My sister married a German. He complained he couldn't get a good
bagel back home. I said: 'Well, whose fault is that?' ~ Emo Philips

Among the games I did not develop myself, my most frequently played game is definitely "Doppelkopf," a traditional German card game; for more than 40 years now, I play it regularly with old school friends. ~ Klaus Teuber

I have loved my German people and my fatherland with a warm heart. ~ Ernst Kaltenbrunner

To all the millions of discontented Hitler in a whirlwind campaign offered what seemed to them, in their misery, some measure of hope. He would make Germany strong again, refuse to pay reparations, repudiate the Versailles Treaty, stamp out corruption, bring the money barons to heel (especially if they were Jews) and see to it that every German had a job and bread. ~ William L. Shirer

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. ~ Angela Merkel

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another....
Say now the king
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give your harbour? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made you, nor that the claimants
We ~ William Shakespeare

As a contrast to this kind of democracy we have the German democracy, which is a true democracy; for here the leader is freely chosen and is obliged to accept full responsibility for all his actions and omissions. The problems to be dealt with are not put to the vote of the majority; but they are decided upon by the individual, and as a guarantee of responsibility for those decisions he pledges all he has in the world and even his life. ~ Adolf Hitler

When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed ... I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it. ~ Irwin Shaw

All the pools are going batshit like you wouldn't believe ... Batshit ... It's a technical term ... Fleidermausscheisse, okay?
Fleidermausscheisse? Kelly silently mouthed the word, and as silently clapped her hands. With a dictionary and patience, she could read scientific German. Thanks to fragments of Yiddish from her folks, she could make a better
not good, but better
stab at speaking it than most of her anglophone peers. But she knew she never would have come up with that particular terminus technicus in a million months of Sundays. ~ Harry Turtledove

The German experience brings us face to face with the major problem of the revolution in Western Europe. In these countries, the old bourgeois mode of production and the centuries-old civilisation which has developed with it have completely impressed themselves upon the thoughts and feelings of the popular masses. Hence, the mentality and inner character of the masses here is quite different from that in the countries of the East, who have not experienced the rule of bourgeois culture; and this is what distinguishes the different courses that the revolution has taken in the East and the West. ~ Anton Pannekoek

In fact I enjoyed every minute of my life at King's, especially the discovery of French and German literature. ~ Patrick White

I have always felt a fundamental core of loneliness in me. Perhaps it comes from being an only child. Perhaps it's my grandfather's sullen thick German blood. I have been alone with my wife and alone with my children, untouchable, unreachable, and I suspect that most of the time they haven't known. It runs deep, this aloneness. I have accommodated it. It informs all my relationships and all my expectations. It makes me almost impossible to surprise by life's grimmer turns of fate. ~ Jack Ketchum

but to the north there was a bank of cirro-cumulus, a mackerel sky, or Schaefchenwolken - "sheep cloud" - as she remembered her father calling it. For some reason he had used German when talking about clouds and sea conditions; an odd habit that she had accepted as just being one of the things he did. "The weather," he had once said to her, smiling, "is German. I don't know why; it just is. Sorry. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

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. ~ Sylvia Plath

If all art is conceptual, the issue is rather simple. For concepts, like pictures, cannot be true or false. They can only be more or less useful for the formation of descriptions. The words of a language, like pictorial formulas, pick out from the flux of events a few signposts which allow us to give direction to our fellow speakers in that game of "Twenty Questions" in which we are engaged. Where the needs of users are similar, the signposts will tend to correspond. We can mostly find equivalent terms in English, French, German, and Latin, and hence the idea has taken root that concepts exist independently of language as the constituents of "reality." But the English language erects a signpost on the roadfork between "clock" and "watch" where the German has only "Uhr." The sentence from the German primer, "Meine Tante hat eine Uhr," leaves us in doubt whether the aunt has a clock or watch. Either of the two translations may be wrong as a description of a fact. In Swedish, by the way, there is an additional roadfork to distinguish between aunts who are "father's sisters," those who are "mother's sisters," and those who are just ordinary aunts. If we were to play our game in Swedish we would need additional questions to get at the truth about the timepiece. ~ E.H. Gombrich

The acknowledgement that this person is English, white, or French, or German, this is Portuguese, this is Rwandan, this is Senegalese, this is a black South Africans is a glorious thing. To speak of those positively, to say that they have characteristics, each one of them, that the others almost always do not have, and that there is a complementarily about it. ~ Desmond Tutu

How many Vietnamese casualties would you estimate that there were during the Vietnam war? The average response on the part of Americans today is about 100,000. The official figure is about two million. The actual figure is probably three to four million. The people who conducted the study raised an appropriate question: What would we think about German political culture if, when you asked people today how many Jews died in the Holocaust, they estimated about 300,000? What would that tell us about German political culture? ~ Noam Chomsky

I love dogs. I grew up with dogs in my family from the time that I was a little boy; we always had German Shepherds and Labradors. I get on very well with dogs, they trust me. ~ Paul Walker

It [the Holocaust] is something like a religion ... The Intellectual Adventure is that we are reversing this entire trend within the space of one generation - that in a few years time no one will believe this particular legend anymore. They will say, as I do, that atrocities were committed. Yes, hundreds of thousands of people were killed, but there were no factories of death. All that is a blood libel against the German people. ~ David Irving

A German walked up to her, his rifle ~ Kristin Hannah

I still have nightmares about holding German sausages over my head. ~ Peter Molyneux

There also wasn't one single bit of grass or dirt outside the airport. Even the median strip was a concrete sidewalk. Where did Atlanta's pet travelers pee? Maybe city dogs just learned to use the sidewalk. We kept walking. It looked like if we crossed the road that all the cars used to get onto the highway, we might come to a planted-up area, but we also might get killed.
Finally, I just lifted Cannoli up and plopped her down on a great big ashtray built into the top of the trash barrel. "Good thing you're not a German shepherd," I said. ~ Claire Cook

I am stretching out this volume, since those German dogs estimate the value of books by their cubic contents. ~ Karl Marx

Families are like countries. They have their own language and jokes and secrets and assumptions about the right and wrong ways of doing things, and some of that always shows in the children, the way something of
Germany or Australia always shows in a German or an Australian, no matter where they go. Outsiders like it or they don't, they feel at home there or they don't. It's like the taste of cilantro.
~ Roland Merullo

All of a sudden (in 1938 I think), in order to extend its autarchy to the domain of cinema, Italy decreed an embargo on American films. It wasn't a question of censorship: as usual the censors granted or denied permission to individual films, and nobody saw the ones that didn't get it and that was it. In spite of the awkward anti-Hollywood propaganda campaign that accompanied the measure (right around that time the regime began to conform to Hitler's racism), the true reason for the embargo was supposed to be commercial protectionism, in order to make room in the market for Italian (and German) productions. For this reason the four largest American production and distribution companies - Metro, Fox, Paramount, Warner - (I'm still relying on memory, trusting the accuracy of the registration of my trauma), whereas films by other American companies like RKO, Columbia, Universal, United Artists (which had also been distributed before then by Italian companies) continued to arrive until 1941, that is until Italy found itself at war with the United States. I was still granted some sporadic satisfaction (in fact, one of the greatest: Stagecoach [John Ford, 1939]) but my collector's voracity suffered a fatal blow.

Compared to all of the prohibitions and obligations that fascism had imposed on us, and to the even more severe ones that it continued to enforce in those years before and then during the war, the veto on American films was certainly a minor or small loss, and I ~ Italo Calvino

Luther's opponent in the Peasants' War, Thomas Muntzer is deeply rooted in mystic tradition . . . Muntzer calls the first step in preparing for God "wonderment": amazement and fright begin when the eternal Word comes into the human heart. "And this wonderment at whether it really is God's Word or not begins to happen when one is a child of six or seven years of age." . . .

Muntzer's interest in Gregorian chant and his attempt, rejected by Luther, to integrate it into the German mass, may perhaps be understood as a manifestation of his mystical love for wonderment.

In connection with "wonderment," Muntzer quotes from Deuteronomy: "But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart" (30:14 RSV). . . This inward word, heard through God's revelation in the abyss of the soul, speaks to human beings without mediation, even without the Bible.

Muntzer opposed Luther in the understanding of Scripture. Muntzer's view of the living Word of God as being "so very close to you" - and which constitutes the first step of mystical cognition (cognitio experimen- talis) - represents a break with Luther's appeal for sola scriptura, (the Scriptures alone) as the basic principle of the Reformation puts it. What in the controversy over indulgences had served well in fighting the financial manipulations of the Church of Rome's authorities, namely this basic principle and its critical force, soon came to serve the consolidation of a new clerical dom ~ Dorothee Solle

I am a bohemian person. I don't speak German, and I live in a foreign country where all the signs are in German. I did that deliberately. I'm like a ghost. Look at how much media and advertising you're subjected to, this mindless chatter of advertising. I just block it out so effortlessly because it's all a foreign language to me. It's really a good thing for my head, living in Berlin. ~ Anton Newcombe

You're the last line of defense. When you're dead, Hitler will march through Leningrad the way he marched through Paris. Do you remember that?'
'That's not fair. The French didn't fight,' Tatiana said, wanting to be anywhere right now but standing in front of men loading artwork from the Hermitage onto armored trucks.
'They didn't fight, Tania, but you will fight. For every street and for every building. And when you lose
'
'The art will be saved.'
'Yes! The art will be saved,' Alexander said emotionally. 'And another artist will paint a glorious picture, immortalizing you, with a club in your raised hand, swinging to hit the German tank as it's about to crush you, all against the backdrop of the statue of Peter the Great atop his bronze horse. And that picture will hang in the Hermitage, and at the start of the next war the curator will once again stand on the street, crying over his vanishing crates. ~ Paullina Simons

Big G.B. said, "Your Daddy ain't magic."
I said, "He ain't?"
He said, "Naw, there ain't any magic."
I said, "What about the blind man's dummy? Is Joesph of Arimathea magic?"
He said, "Get your shotgun, Sugar."
I went to the corner near the stove and took my shotgun by the barrel. I got my shell bag and looked at Big G.B.to see what he was thinking. His face didn't tell me. I stood by the kitchen door holding the shotgun and shells. I said, "Is Joseph of Arimathea magic, Big G.B.?"
He said, "There ain't no magic. Magic is the same as sentimental. Scratch the surface of sentimental and you know what you find?
Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Magic is German in nature and evil and not real. Scratch magic, Sugar, and you're looking for death. ~ Lewis Nordan

The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. I'll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fiction - until he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define "literature". The Latin root simply means "letters". Those letters are either delivered - they connect with an audience - or they don't. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but that's because there are trashy facets of humanity. What people value in their books - and thus what they count as literature - really tells you more about them than it does about the book. ~ Brent Weeks

I am German, yes, but I am not a Nazi. There is a difference, and one day I hope you understand that. ~ Caroline Leech

In one area in Serbia two villages have been reduced to ashes. In Greece 220 men of one village have been shot. In France there are extensive shootings while I write. Certainly more than a thousand people are murdered in this way every day and another thousand German men are habituated to murder. May I know this and yet sit at my table in my heated flat and have tea? What shall I say when I am asked: And what did you do during that time? How can anyone know these things and still walk around free? ~ Helmuth James Graf Von Moltke

Elgar is not manic enough to be Russian, not witty or pointilliste enough to be French, not harmonically simple enough to be Italian and not stodgy enough to be German. We arrive at his Englishry by pure elimination. ~ Anthony Burgess

In France, this general climate of distrust toward private capitalism was deepened after 1945 by the fact that many members of the economic elite were suspected of having collaborated with the German occupiers and indecently enriched themselves during the war. It was in this highly charged post-Liberation climate that major sectors of the economy were nationalized, including in particular the banking sector, the coal mines, and the automobile industry. The Renault factories were punitively seized after their owner, Louis Renault, was arrested as a collaborator in September 1944. ~ Anonymous

I saw him with her last week, at a coffeehouse near my apartment. They were holding hands. She's captivated him."
"The Lakota Captive." Leta made a line in the air with her hand. "I can see it now, the wily, brave Lakota warrior with the brazen white woman pioneer. She carries him off into the sunset over her shoulder…"
Cecily whacked her with a strand of grass she'd pulled.
"You write history your way, I'll write it my way," Leta said wickedly.
"Native Americans are stoic and unemotional," Cecily reminded her. "All the books say so."
"We never read many books in the old days, so we didn't know that," came the dry explanation. She shook her head. "What a sad stereotype so many make of us-a bloodthirsty ignorant people who never smile because they're too busy torturing people over hot fires."
"Wrong tribe," Cecily corrected. She frowned thoughtfully. "That was the northeastern native people."
"Who's the Native American here, you or me?"
Cecily shrugged. "I'm German-American." She brightened. "But I had a grandmother who dated a Cherokee man once. Does that count?"
Leta hugged her warmly. "You're my adopted daughter. You're Lakota, even if you haven't got my blood. ~ Diana Palmer

He told me that once, in the war, he'd come upon a German soldier in the grass with his insides falling out; he was just lying there in agony. The soldier had looked up at Sergeant Leonard, and even though they didn't speak the same language, they understood each other with just a look. The German lying on the ground; the American standing over him. He put a bullet in the soldier's head. He didn't do it with anger, as an enemy, but as a fellow man, one soldier helping another. ~ Libba Bray

The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German Army is sitting in Paris sipping coffee. ~ Regis Philbin

He mentioned Beethoven. She had read in the library about that musician - his name was pronounced with an a and spelled with a double e. He was a German fellow like Mozart. When he was living he spoke in a foreign language and lived in a foreign place - like she wanted to do. ~ Carson McCullers

The triumph of the Romans was indeed sullied by their treatment of the captive king, whom they hung on a gibbet without the knowledge of their indignant general. This disgraceful act of cruelty which might be imputed to the fury of the troops, was followed by the deliberate murder of Withicab, the son of Vadomair; a German prince, of a weak and sickly constitution, but of a daring and formidable spirit. ~ Edward Gibbon

In the November 1940 week of nightmares, when mighty German planes bombed London, British bombers retaliated by attacking Berlin, where the Soviet foreign minister, Molotov, was pressing Hitler for an answer to just exactly when German forces would invade the British Isles.

We had heard of the conference beforehand,' Churchill told Parliament, ' and, although not invited to join in the discussion, did not wish to be entirely left out of the proceedings. ~ William Stevenson

When Texas seceded from the Union, the German preacher, Peter Moeling, wrote from Galveston: "I shall die a true patriot and a soldier of the Cross, the gun in hand and Christ within my heart. ~ Ross Phares

The Nazi invasion didn't happen by the end of 1939 after all. The German seizure of the Low Countries - Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg - didn't occur until May of 1940, and Jacob was grateful for the extra months of training and conditioning. Maurice, Avi, and Jacob used the time to recruit and assemble the rest of their team of young Jewish insurgents. ~ Joel C. Rosenberg

That night Koch... tacked Chalmers down at a cocktail party for the conferencees and chastised him for his speech. It is precisely because philisophical approaches to consciousness have all failed that scientists must focue on the brain, Koch declared in his rapid-fire German-accented voice, his rubberneckers gathered. Chalmers's information-based theory of consciousness, Koch continued, liek all philosophical ideas, was untestable and therefore useless. "Why don't you just say that when you have a brain the Holy Ghost comes down and makes you conscious!" Koch exlaimed. Such a theory was unnecissarily complicated, Chalmers responded drily, and it would not accord with his own subjective experience. "But how do I know that your subjective experience is the same as mine?" Koch sputtered. "How do I even know you're conscious? ~ John Horgan