Top 88 Germans Quotes

When people come to write about my period of office, I would be very happy if they say that I made a contribution to finding the happy medium again for the Germans.

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

I would do a ‘Pitch Perfect 29’, where the Bellas take on the Spaniards instead of the Germans. All the girls would have to learn Spanish. I’ll teach them!

‘Il faut vivre’ might almost be the French national motto from 1940 to June 1944, but who is to say ours would have been any different if the Germans had paraded victoriously through London and Generalfeldmarschall Von Runstedt made his headquarters at Claridge’s?

I think it has been a tremendous feat on the part of East Germans since 1990 to adapt to everything changing.

At that moment of realization I knew that I had been blind because I had wished not to see; it was only then that I realised, at last, that all these dead men, French and Germans, were brothers, and I was the brother of them all.

Why can’t you ask people if they want more or fewer Germans or Belgians or Moroccans?

For if the Germans do not help defend the West, American and Canadian troops must cross the seas to do the job, and I venture to believe that the troops – if not the statesmen – regard this as an interference at least in their own domestic affairs.

We must learn, and especially we Germans, that resistance is not only possible and allowed in dictatorships. There is resistance that man must perform every day.

Germans have a rich history of playing well in the World Cup.

Germans have an understanding of history and cannot allow themselves to forget it. It may be a curse, but in some ways, it’s a blessing. It makes them cautious.

The trouble with Germans is not that they fire shells, but that they engrave them with quotations from Kant.

The Germans must be together.

During a few days’ halt near Vesontio for the provision of corn and other supplies, a panic arose from inquiries made by our troops and remarks uttered by Gauls and traders, who affirmed that the Germans were men of a mighty frame and an incredible valour and skill at arms.

I don’t know about Mario Balotelli saying, ‘Why always me?’ – England should be saying as a nation, ‘Why always us?’ You can go back to 1970, when Gordon Banks got food poisoning and we lost to West Germany. Then there was 1986 and Maradona’s hand. And last time, Frank Lampard not getting his goal against the Germans.

We’re all taking part in this solidarity. The French, the Germans, just like all the Europeans in the ESM. Let’s stop thinking that there’s only one country who’s going to pay for the others. That’s false.

Those who had talked to us about national pride and Christian brotherly love were the first to come to terms or actively collaborate with the Germans. It was an immense blow to my entire intellectual and emotional existence.

Notionally a left-wing movement, the Anti-Germans were born after the collapse of the Berlin wall. While most Germans rejoiced at the end of the Cold War, the Anti-Germans feared that a united Germany might lead to a fourth Reich – and a return of anti-Semitism.

Norway was occupied by the Germans in the Second World War, and I’ve met a lot of people who had to live through that occupation in varying degrees.

I love the Germans and they love me.

Our country undergoes periodic episodes of extreme intolerance and fear of foreigners, refugees in particular. Not only were people of Japanese descent placed in internment camps during World War II, but so were some Italians and Germans.

We British and Americans have never been conquered and occupied by the Germans, or forced to make the choice between defiance and collaboration, or haunted by the choices, evasions and moral ambiguities that only a defeated and occupied country can feel.

People in Tel Aviv can not imagine, but in 1990, here in Leipzig or Dresden, whoever wanted to buy a car had to wait 14 years. The East Germans worked like people in the West, but the fruits of their labor were harvested by a criminal regime.

In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.

Thirty percent of Americans have German blood in their family. I don’t see any major difference in the engineering abilities of Americans and Germans.

I don’t know why ‘Midsomer Murders’ is so popular; I’ve asked this many times and I’ve asked the Germans particularly because I’ve become very fond of them, to be honest. And they say it’s the irony, the sense of humour and so on.

Perhaps we Germans are a bit sensitive when it comes to walls and race.

The defeat of the Augustan policy, as the peace with Maroboduus and the sufferance of the Teutoburg disaster may well be termed, was hardly a victory of the Germans.

My mother and I were part of a deal in the mid-’60s between Romania and Israel. Israel bought freedom for Romanian Jews for $2,000 a head. Ceausescu made a bundle in hard currency. He also ‘sold’ ethnic Germans to West Germany. Instead of going to Israel, my mother and I came to the United States.

At the beginning of June 1944, the war was reaching a climax. German troops had been brutalised by the savagery of the ongoing fighting in Russia, where the Red Army was secretly preparing its vast encirclement of the Germans’ Army Group Centre.

The Germans have done wonderful work. Not long ago, a German battle group battalion conducted a very impressive counterinsurgency operation in a portion of Baghlan province. I think these are the first counterinsurgency operations conducted by any German element after World War II. And they did a very impressive job.

Let us show our fellow countrymen and the entire world what the Germans can do when they work for peace.

A book is worth a few francs; we Germans can afford to destroy those. We all may not appreciate artistic merit, but cash value is another matter.

One thing about Italians is you can’t let them in your head. They’re inquisitive. The English and Germans are a dog tribe; the Italians are cats. They’re very helpful, but it’s in their own rhythm, their own way, and it can drive you crazy.

The Germans and I no longer speak the same language.

The thing that I like about Germany is that Germans are so much like us. It’s not like going to some other countries, where the differences are overwhelming and you walk around in a fog. Germans are so similar to Americans.

The Germans are very critical. They like to drag acts down. They make you feel you’re not so good – not so important.

The Security Council represents the situation from 1945 – you had the Allies who won the war who occupied that. The defeated guys – the Germans and Japan – were out. The occupied countries had no voice. That was fine in ’45, but today, Germany rules Europe, frankly. They are driving Europe but have no voice.

Many in the English-speaking world came to agree with the Germans that the Treaty of Versailles, and the reparations in particular, were unjust, and that Lloyd George had capitulated to the vengeful French.

E. Klimov’s ‘Come and See,’ about partisans fighting the Germans in Byelorussia, is the greatest anti-war film ever made.

There’s a reason that there are oodles of young Aussies, Germans, Japanese, even Chinese backpackers traipsing around the world. They are unencumbered by debilitating student loans. No such luck for the American Theater Arts major with $120,000 in loans.

We Germans have a special responsibility to be alert, sensitive, and aware of what we did during the Nazi era and about lasting damage caused in other countries. I’ve got tremendous sympathy for that.

The necessity for rules and strictness is a way of dealing with an enormously powerful impulse: Germans are among the most emotional people on the planet. Maybe it has to do with the fact that, as a nation, they are always drawn back to nature and the forest.

I think that we must come together progressively, with the British, the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians and with the new members of the European Union, we must make an effort to forge closer links.

When the movie was done, Number Five was crated up. Eric took him over to Germany; displayed him over there because Germans really liked this movie. It was very popular with them.

A few weeks ago we were reminded that other peoples – in particular the United States of America – fought so that we Germans could live in liberty. That we should never forget.

We must differentiate between guilt and duty. The soldier on the front, like the common man, who does his duty everywhere, should not be held responsible for the actions of a few who also called themselves Germans.

Just as the British subject loves England despite her faults, so we must insist that all Germans who were part of the old Germany and helped shape her, recognize the greatness and worthiness of present-day Germany.

In the 1930s, there were so many different conflicts going on between the British, the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Romanians and so on.