All Quotes

"Unhappy German nation, how do you like the Messianic role allotted to you, not by God, nor by destiny, but by a handful of perverted and bloody-minded men?"

"Disease makes men more physical, it leaves them nothing but body."

"The German people cannot, in the last resort, blink their eyes to the fact that England's attitude to power is quite other, and an incomparably more natural and straightforward one, than her own. Both parties understand something quite different by it—it is the same word with a wholly different meaning. To Englishmen power is in no way the darkly emotional concept as viewed by Germans; power, in English eyes, implies no emotions—the will to power is a German invention—but a function; they exercise it in the gentlest and most unobtrusive manner, with the least possible display, and safeguarding as much freedom as is feasible, for they do not believe that power is a proclamation of slavery, and are therefore not slaves to power themselves. That is called Liberalism—an old-fashioned word for a very vital thing; for he alone is free who allowed others to be free, and the taskmaster is owned by no man as his lord."

"It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive."

"What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life."

"But he would “stay the course” — it was his favorite motto."

"Politics has been called the “art of the possible,” and it actually is a realm akin to art insofar as, like art, it occupies a creatively mediating position between spirit and life, the idea and reality."

"Reduced to a miserable mass level, the level of a Hitler, German Romanticism broke out into hysterical barbarism."

"If Goethe claimed towards the end of his life that every reasonable person is a moderate Liberal, then in our time one must say: Every reasonable person is a moderate Socialist."

"I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it."

"I have read your book and its terrible documentation with deepest emotion. I cannot describe the mixed feeling of abhorrence and loathing which has filled my heart while perusing these records of human degradation and abominable cruelty. . . . To keep quiet would serve only the moral indifference of the world . . . You have done your duty in publishing this book and bringing these facts to light."

"Ik geloof nooit dat de oorlog de schuld is alleen van de grote mannen, van de regeerders en kapitalisten. O neen, de kleine man doet het net zo goed graag, anders zouden de volkeren er toch al lang tegen in opstand zijn gekomen! Er is nu eenmaal in de mensen een drang tot vernieling, een drang tot doodslaan, tot vermoorden en razen en zolang de gehele mensheid, zonder uitzondering, geen grote metamorphose heeft ondergaan, zal de oorlog woeden, zal alles wat opgebouwd, aangekweekt en gegroeid is, weer geschonden en vernietigd worden, waarna de mensheid opnieuw moet beginnen."

"Ik ben vaak neerslachtig geweest, maar nooit wanhopig, ik beschouw dit onderduiken als een gevaarlijk avontuur, dat romantisch en interessant is. Ik beschouw elke ontbering als een amusement in mijn dagboek. Ik heb me nu eenmaal voorgenomen, dat ik een ander leven zal leiden dan andere meisjes en later een ander leven dan gewone huisvrouwen. Dit is het goede begin van het interessante en daarom, daarom alleen moet ik in de meest gevaarlijke ogenblikken lachen om het humoristische van de situatie."

"[Ik vind], dat er nog altijd iets moois overblijft, aan de natuur, de zonneschijn, de vrijheid, aan jezelf, daar heb je wat aan. Kijk daarnaar, dan vind je jezelf weer en God, dan word je evenwichtig. En wie gelukkig is, zal ook anderen gelukkig maken, wie moed en vertrouwen heeft, zal nooit in de ellende ondergaan!"

"“Which books are ruined?” I asked Margot, who was going through my library of treasures. “Algebra,” Margot said. I hurried over for a look, but unfortunately the algebra book had not been destroyed completely too."

"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."

"En begint er nog tijdens dat gevecht al tweedracht te komen, is toch de Jood weer minder dan de ander? O het is treurig, heel erg treurig, dat weer voor de zoveelste maal de oude wijsheid bevestigd is: "Wat één Christen doet, moet hijzelf verantwoorden, wat één Jood doet, valt op alle Joden terug.""

"[...] let the end come, even if it is hard, then at least we’ll know whether we will win out in the end or go under."

"Ik geloof dat het inzicht, dat het de plicht van de vrouw is dat zij kinderen krijgt, zich in de loop van de volgende eeuw wel zal veranderen en plaats zal maken voor waardering en bewondering voor haar, die zonder mopperen en grote woorden de lasten op haar schouders neemt!"

"Luiheid mag aantrekkelijk schijnen, werken geeft bevrediging."

"Wij leven allen, maar weten niet waarom en waarvoor, wij leven allen met het doel gelukkig te worden, we leven allen verschillend en toch gelijk."

"Dat is het moeilijke in deze tijd: idealen, dromen, mooie verwachtingen komen nog niet bij ons op of ze worden door de gruwelijke werkelijkheid getroffen en zo totaal verwoest. Het is een groot wonder, dat ik niet al mijn verwachtingen heb opgegeven, want ze lijken absurd en onuitvoerbaar. Toch houd ik ze vast, ondanks alles, omdat ik nog steeds aan de innerlijke goedheid van den mens geloof. Het is me ten enenmale onmogelijk alles op te bouwen op de basis van dood, ellende en verwarring. Ik zie hoe de wereld langzaam steeds meer in een woestijn herschapen wordt, ik hoor steeds harder de aanrollende donder, die ook ons zal doden, ik voel het leed van millioenen mensen mee en toch, als ik naar de hemel kijk, denk ik, dat alles zich weer ten goede zal wenden, dat ook deze hardheid zal ophouden, dat er weer rust en vrede in de wereldorde zal komen. Intussen moet ik mijn denkbeelden hoog en droog houden, in de tijden die komen zijn ze misschien toch nog uit te voeren."

"Ouders kunnen alleen raad of goede aanwijzingen meegeven, de uiteindelijke vorming van iemands karakter ligt in zijn eigen hand."

"Vergeef me, ik heb niet voor niets de naam een bundeltje tegenspraak te zijn!"

"Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again."

"We took her in, but she was not as pleasant a tenant as the fat gentleman had been. To start with she was very sloppy and tossed her things all around, and secondly, and this was the main thing, she had a fiancé who often drank too much and that was not very pleasant to have around the house. One night, for example, we awoke with a start at the sound of the doorbell and when my father answered it he found the drunken fiancé, who slapped him on the shoulder and kept repeating: “We’re good friends! Yes, we are good friends!” Boom... the door was slammed in his face."

"All people are born equal, all people die in the end and keep nothing of their worldly status. All riches, all power and all greatness exist only for so few years, why then is that mortality clung to so strongly?"

"We all know that a good example is more effective than advice. So set a good example, and it won't take long for others to follow."

"How wonderful it is that no one has to wait, but can start right now to gradually change the world! How wonderful it is that everyone, great and small, can immediately help bring about justice by giving of themselves! [...] You can always — always — give something, even if it's a simple act of kindness!"

"No one has ever become poor by giving. If you act that way, then after a few generations people will no longer have to feel sorry for child beggars, because there will no longer be any!"

"Who knows, perhaps one day people will listen more to “the little piece of God”, which we call a conscience, than to their own desires!."

"Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"

"Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness."

"Anne Frank is each of us, and beyond what each of us is and will be. Her diary does not contain photographs of trains pulling into the last smoke-filled station. She dared to speak of springtime's light, and the body of a girl becoming a woman. I like Anne Frank because she was no more nor less than ourselves, a schoolgirl. She spoke of awakening to excitement, of the rain in Europe. Even so, there was something more in Anne, beyond that first innocence, as if she were submerged in transparencies."

"(Have you related to any other stories of children or adolescents, of young people growing up?) There was The Catcher in the Rye, the Diary of Ann Frank... Yes, actually I have, definitely."

"Anne Frank's legacy is still very much alive and it can address us fully, especially at a time when the map of the world is changing and when dark passions are awakening within people."

"Here's how much people love dead Jews: Anne Frank's diary, first published in Dutch in 1947 via her surviving father, Otto Frank, has been translated into seventy languages and has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and the Anne Frank House now hosts well over a million visitors each year"

"Of the multitude who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank."

"The fatal futility of Fact."

"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact."

"One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did, but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way: If we were capable of taking in the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live."

"Some of us read Anne Frank's diary on Robben Island and derived much encouragement of it."

"Gail Horalek, the mother of a 7th-grade child in Michigan in the US, has made international headlines by complaining that the unabridged version of Anne Frank's diary is pornographic and should not be taught at her daughter's school. At issue for Horalek is a section detailing Anne's exploration of her own genitalia, material originally omitted by Anne's father, Otto Frank, when he prepared the manuscript for publication in the late 40s I had to look up what age kids are in the 7th grade. They're 12 to 13! They're only about a year younger than Anne was when she wrote of her vagina: "There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can't imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!" There cannot be a 13-year-old girl on the planet who hasn't had a root around and arrived at this exact stage of bafflement."

"Horalek is, of course, wrong to call the passages pornographic. Pornography is material intended to arouse sexual excitement, and I very much doubt that was Anne's intention when she wrote to her imaginary confidant Kitty about her journeys of self-discovery."

"Anne is going through puberty, and she describes her changed vagina in honest detail, saying, "until I was 11 or 12, I didn't realise there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn't see them. What's even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris." (Oh Anne, we've all been there.) She continues: "In the upper part, between the outer labia, there's a fold of skin that, on second thought, looks like a kind of blister. That's the clitoris." It's beautiful, visceral writing, and it's describing something that most young women experience. And yet I can understand that the junior Ms Horalek would have squirmed and wished herself elsewhere when this was read in class. We live in a society in which young women are taught to be ashamed of the changes that their bodies undergo at puberty – to be secretive about them, and even to pretend that they don't exist. Breasts, the minute they bud, are strapped into harnesses, and the nipples disguised from view. Period paraphernalia must be discreet, with advertisers routinely boasting that their tampons look enough like sweets to circumvent the social horror of discovery. For my generation, removal of post-pubescent hair on the legs and underarms was mandatory. For Ms Horalek's generation, it is mandatory for pubic hair too. Anne writes: "When you're standing up, all you see from the front is hair. Between your legs there are two soft, cushiony things, also covered with hair, which press together when you're standing, so you can't see what's inside." How must reading this feel for pubescent girls who've already internalised the message that they must spend the rest of their lives maintaining the illusion that their body hair doesn't exist."

"Dealing with this discomfort only involves censoring Anne Frank's diary if you're quite, quite odd. For the rest of us, the answer might be a little more free-flowing boob, some brazen Mooncup sterilisation, hairy legs sprinting through the summer grasses and, to use a pun that is intended as the highest compliment, Frankness about masturbation, sexuality and our bodies. Because it isn't just the Horaleks of this world who teach girls to be shameful rather than celebratory."

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence..."

"Matters of fact, which as Mr Budgell somewhere observes, are very stubborn things."

"But facts are chiels that winna ding, and downa be disputed."

"If any theories or opinions of mine can be damaged by facts, so much the worse for my theories."