Social Democrats

"Nothing is more important than pastoral care for people in need. [...] For me, nothing is less important than theology."

"If we continue on for decades as before, then I have to be pessimistic about our country."

"With a democratic society, the concept of multiculturalism is difficult to reconcile. Maybe in a very long term. But if you ask, where multicultural societies have so far worked, you can get very quickly to the conclusion that they only work there peacefully where there is a strong authoritarian state there. So, it was a mistake that we picked up at the beginning of the 60's guest workers from foreign cultures into the country. There is still no multicultural society [in the USA] either, but perhaps one day there will be. Singapore is a good example, but the cultures living there all speak English and the political system is based on authority."

"It is an irony of history that the public sector union, my union, in which I am a member for over 50 years, that imagines that the public service should be the pacemaker in the wage increase. One must be crazy."

"What troubles me is that we will see in Germany no approximation of the East German income to the West German income anymore, because productivity stays so far behind."

"The multicultural society is an illusion of intellectuals."

"The snail's pace is the normal pace of any democracy."

"Do we want also to be world champion in moaning?"

"In the basic questions, one have to be naive. And I think that the problems of the world and of humanity cannot be solved without idealism. However, I also believe that one should be realistic and pragmatic at the same time."

"Today, the most important is to learn to understand other people. And not only their music, but also their philosophy, their attitude, their behavior. Only then will nations can get along with each other."

"It is true that the politician at the moment of his actions or if he explains his actions and justifies them cannot provide at the same time also great philosophy. But if he acts without philosophical and ethical foundations, he is in danger of making mistakes. He is in danger to sink into opportunism. He is even in danger of being a charlatan."

"The more direct decisions by all the people, all the more ungovernable is the country!"

"I think that the idea that a modern society would be able to establish itself as a multicultural society, with as many cultural groups as possible is absurd. One cannot make out of Germany with at least a thousand years of history since Otto I subsequently make a crucible."

"Whoever has visions should go to the doctor."

"It seems to me that the German people can - pointedly - tolerate 5 percent price increase better than 5 percent unemployment."

"Science and future, that is a contradiction."

"Did it have to come to this? The paradox is that when Europe was less united, it was in many ways more independent. The leaders who ruled in the early stages of integration had all been formed in a world before the global hegemony of the United States, when the major European states were themselves imperial powers, whose foreign policies were self-determined. These were people who had lived through the disasters of the Second World War, but were not crushed by them. This was true not just of a figure like De Gaulle, but of Adenauer and Mollet, of Eden and Heath, all of whom were quite prepared to ignore or defy America if their ambitions demanded it. Monnet, who did not accept their national assumptions, and never clashed with the US, still shared their sense of a future in which Europeans could settle their own affairs, in another fashion. Down into the 1970s, something of this spirit lived on even in Giscard and Schmidt, as Carter discovered. But with the neo-liberal turn of the 1980s, and the arrival in power in the 1990s of a postwar generation, it faded. The new economic doctrines cast doubt on the state as a political agent, and the new leaders had never known anything except the Pax Americana. The traditional springs of autonomy were gone."

"Had Brandt not taken the lead in ‘normalisation’, other powers would probably have done so. At the same time, West German governmental and, to some degree, public complicity in the East German regime increased alongside engagement with it. This complicity was displayed both by Brandt’s SPD successor, Helmut Schmidt, the Chancellor from 1974 to 1982, and by the latter’s CDU replacement from 1982, Helmut Kohl. Complicity, however, may be an inappropriate as well as harsh judgment, as little would have been achieved by upholding the Hallstein Doctrine and continuing to refuse to enter into dialogue with East Germany. Moreover, the change in policy brought real relief in the form of visiting rights and family reunifications, not to mention buying ‘regime opponents’ out of jail."

"Helmut Schmidt continues to speak of a sense of duty, predictability, feasibility, firmness [...] These are secondary virtues. Simply put precise:.. So you can also run a concentration camp with them."

"Women receive easily the most difficult assignments."

"It is positive that the change in Finland means a rush in the elections and not in the streets."

"Organising free and fair elections is more important than the result itself."

"If we follow the traditional way of thought, there will always be traditional enemies. Extremist circles from both sides will find causes to give rise to problems."

"Today in the era of globalization there is no such issue as borders between states of the same nation."

"Girls can do anything. We do do anything and we expect to be treated as equals."

"If ordinary means I have suddenly got to produce a household of kids and iron Peter's shirts, I'm sorry, I'm not interested."

"We have a lot of issues to sort through, most of them because of the pandemic. 11 million girls have not returned to school since 2020 and that’s a problem we should solve. I believe in Women Deliver’s ability to build solidarity and find solutions while sticking to the themes,”"

"The carrot is a happy and harmonious society, the only stick is shame."

"People weren’t used to the prospect of a woman becoming prime minister so there were attacks about my appearance, my voice and even my clothing. But I found that there was little point dwelling on such criticism. I just had to look straight ahead and get on with the task at hand and, by and large, that strategy worked for me. I think women politicians today are more confident in being able to call out such behaviour than I was at a time when it was very rare to have many women in parliament."

"I believe I'm the best person for the job. Obviously I'm a woman, but I've never sought election on the basis of being a woman. I've always sought election as the best person for the job."

"It's very important to be able to act properly. You need financing, and you never have enough."

"You have to be rather straightforward with your clients. You can't tell the parties only nice things. This is not an entertainment show; it's not reality television either."

"During the next 10 years about 1.2 billion young 15-to-30-year-olds will be entering the job market and with the means now at our disposal about 300 million will get a job. What will we offer these young, about a billion of them? — or will we leave them to be recruited by criminal leagues and terrorists? … I think this is one of the greatest challenges if we want to achieve peaceful development and hope for these young."

"Since I know that about a million people have been killed by the government of Iraq, I do not need much those weapons of mass destruction."

"I think it's a disgrace for the international community that we have allowed so many conflicts to become frozen, and we are not making a serious effort to solve them."

"That day may come. But I’m not seeing it coming soon. We are still strong enough; we’re still popular; I think we are doing the right things."

"Roads are the blood vessels of the economy."

"We cannot continue to mourn about our country being poor while our minerals are lying untapped and with harvesting at Lake Natron, we will not be the first to do so, because our neighbours, Kenya, are doing the same on the other side of the lake."

"There are no demands - undue demands... There are many questions we get? why China? why now and the answer is why not?... There is no any hidden agenda in our cooperation with China, it is a relationship based on mutual understanding and equality; they understand our situation."

"Justice has to be done, justice must be seen to be done, what the AU is simply saying is that what is critical, what is the priority, is peace. That is priority number one now."

"I gazed at that small boat and said to myself, mhh, I am a Mkwere without swimming skills. Better for Membe because he has married in Mbamba Bay. He can swim."

"This is our kind of politics-to involve the people in staging protest marches, but not in matters that concern their very lives."

"This is senseless cruelty. It must stop forthwith... I am told that people kill albinos and chop their body parts, including fingers, believing they can get rich when mining or fishing."

"You’re negotiating all these problems for several years, they will talk about that, about a newspaper, they will talk about an underage boy in prison (for example). He’s 17 and he raped a nine-year-old, and they ask: “Why do you lock him up?” And so I say, what do you do, this is a rape case, and they want to discuss, I spend so many hours discussing whatever it is this boy... So what do they want us to do? Release him? So that he can go and rape another one?"

"They discuss no strings. There, the people, they don’t discuss anything. You can’t beat the British, you’ve got to sit with them for hours. They talk about this, they talk about that."

"I don’t think they (the Chinese) have better friends in Africa than us. But when we compare to how much money we get, if we succeed, if the MCA is funded by the US Congress for Tanzania, it’s going to be $700 Million. It’s going to be huge, it may be a total of all the Chinese have been giving us all these years."

"Why China suddenly is a question? Of course, there has been the concern that they may not be giving loans that are concessional, and the danger is that these countries might go back into the debt, some of the countries that they have been forgiven their debts. This I found to be a valid point, maybe not with Tanzania, because we don’t have much in terms of this huge Chinese development assistance."

"I would have been surprised if you had not asked that question, because everywhere I am, I am asked how about the Chinese. There’s a lot of sudden interest on the Chinese and Africa. You know, what is it that we are trying to do in Africa? Africa as a continent in pursuit of development."

"Tanzania is standing by the people of Zimbabwe including President Mugabe... Mugabe is there, he is president, he has been elected. If Tanzania had simply said, stupid, you’re hopeless, a murderer, a violator of basic human rights; does that remove Mugabe from office? It doesn’t."

"I don’t know how to get the money but if [the radar] is overpriced, definitely we deserve to be paid … They cannot take money from a poor country."