Journalists From Germany

"The Negro problem is a white man's problem."

"...the anachronistic conception that Greece and Rome alone should be considered sources of culture for us, and that therefore they must remain for all time the focal point of historical-philological research. [Classicists] still practice that orthodox philology, which claims and possesses an influence, which it has not for a long time deserved, [and] that intolerant onesidedness which only accords the oriental sciences a hearing in so far as they are related to the history and culture of Greece, but otherwise are blind and want to be blind to the enormous field of Asian knowledge, which has brought us into contact with the modern world. [They are still beholden to] that real “unworldliness” in the scholarly sense, which takes no part in the widened historical conceptions of our day. Those are the forces with which Orientalistik has always had to struggle, and which today too block Sinology’s path, ... And added to this is another fact, that one ought to think, should offer [Sinology] a leg up, but actually because of the weirdness of our academic [canons of] scientificness hinders it; and that is its vital connection with the present. If Sinology only had to do exclusively with a long finished, ruined and then re-excavated culture, then perhaps there would be a possibility of finding grace in the eyes of the philological right-thinkers. .."

"...the days of intellectual charlatanry in Europe seem to be numbered."

"Human religiosity can go far astray, when it is [articulated in the form of] a church."

"Koeppen’s Buddha was a revolutionary; indeed, the author argues: “‘There is really no question that if the Indian people had not already been completely stripped of their religion and robbed of all courage and zeal for life by theological-priestly vampirism and earthly despotism, the call of liberation and the preaching of the equality of all men which Cakjamuni [Buddha] unleashed would necessarily have led to a rebellion of the lowest classes just as Luther’s preaching of Christian freedom [led to] the peasant revolts.”"

"What will this Europe be for the Orient in the future? A band of swindlers and oppressors, without honor, without shame!"

"[...] the soul feels, in contemplation of the landscape, a gentle being-carried, a movement as if by an invisible spirit, through which lingering on the charming details first gains its appeal."

"An artist who forgets the world over his work will never speak to the world through the work, may perhaps tear the work dead from himself, but will never be able to close it into its own free and necessary life."

"The state is [...] an alliance of past generations with the following ones, and vice versa. It is an alliance not only of contemporaries, but also of 'spatial contemporaries'; [...] The state is not merely the union of many 'living side by side', but also of many 'succeeding one another' families."

"A poem is a whole, complete 'made' world: a fiction is a half, incomplete, poorly made piece of world."

"Müller was a man of great and versatile talents, an excellent orator, and a suggestive writer."

"When the world of the senses and the world of the spirit appear absolutely separated, then sin is at its peak: it has systematized and completed itself."

"I too have often dreamed of a union of that greater nation to which we belong, as a branch belongs to the trunk, expecting revolutions, heroes, and various changes in the sentiments of nations, which should come and favor the dream. The great federalism of European peoples, which will one day come, as surely as we live, will also bear German colors; for everything great, profound, and eternal in all European institutions is German – that is the certainty that has remained to me among all those hopes. Who can still separate the German element out of Europe?"

"Man is endowed with a thousandfold desires and infinite longings, and thus has been sent into a world that would be rich enough to grant even more than he can demand. Every glow of the heart finds its shadow, every thirst its wave, every longing its distance, and countless hidden, well-protected refuges are prepared for the soul that strives for safety and peace."

"Man cannot be conceived outside of the state."

"The reconciliation of science and art and of their noblest ideas with serious political life was the purpose of my larger works."

"Sybille Bedford is the most sensual of writers. No one writes as she does about the smells and colours of the , about the pleasure of food and wine, or — in contrast — about the overstuffed house of a solid Jewish family in Berlin at the turn of the 20th century. A short paragraph of hers can expand in the reader's mind into a hinterland of suggestion and sensation. However does she do it? She says in Quicksands that she took a lesson from Ernest Hemingway's remark that "all you have to do is to write one true sentence, and then go on from there"."

"No writer played less to the gallery. Often shy, she could nevertheless tell marvellously funny stories about Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Edith Wharton or the fastidious Huxleys in India, offered a meal of chocolates, ice cream, dumplings stuffed with curried mice. One remembers a sturdy, trousered figure, bright blue eyes, effective and observant, the clipped voice quickening at an ungenerous remark or deference to some fashionable fraud. Always she treasured "that sense of lighter heart, deep-grooved pleasures, daylight and proportion". Her memoir, Quicksands (2005), revived interest in the writer, and her elegant, insightful work."

"' ... had been earning its advance, and Aldous was being paid royalties. The book sold 2,500 copies in the first year and 86 the year after. (', Scott Fitzgerald's first novel published the year before, sold forty-five thousand.) Cash in hand, Aldous enrolled Suzanne in an art course he had seen advertised in '."

"The were delighted to accept a new god, but reluctant to relinquish many of the old ones."

"The descendants of the sleeping on the pavements of are paupers. We speak of poverty as being abject, extreme, dire, genteel; crippling, unmitigated, relative. It can be all of these, but it is always the last."

"Islam has a total organization of life that is completely different from ours; it embraces simply everything. There is a very marked subordination of woman to man; there is a very tightly knit criminal law, indeed, a law regulating all areas of life, that is opposed to our modern ideas about society. One has to have a clear understanding that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of a pluralistic society."

"From the outset, Bergoglio wanted to break with papal continuity, challenge what had been handed down, confuse it or simply cause "chaos", as Javier Martinez-Brocal says in his new book."

"Celibacy is not a matter of compulsion. Someone is accepted as a priest only when he does it of his own accord."

"The renunciation of marriage and family is thus to be understood in terms of this vision: I renounce what, humanly speaking, is not only the most normal but also the most important thing. I forgo bringing forth further life on the tree of life, and I live in the faith that my land is really God - and so I make it easier for others, also, to believe that there is a kingdom of heaven. I bear witness to Jesus Christ, to the Gospel, not only with words, but also with this specific mode of existence, and I place my life in this form at his disposal."

"We have such difficulty understanding this renunciation today because the relationship to marriage and children has clearly shifted. To have to die without children was once synonymous with a useless life: The echoes of my own life die away, and I am completely dead. If I have children, then I continue to live in them; it's a sort of immortality through posterity. ..."

"He is the most widely read theologian of the contemporary age, with over 13 million copies of his books on Jesus in circulation. Symposiums on him are held all over the world."

"He had been in a wheelchair for some time, and his voice was barely audible. But his spirit was still alert. He conveyed great sadness about what is happening in Europe, the war and the situation of the Church. I asked him, Pope Benedict, why he had not yet met death. He replied that he felt he had to stay, as a witness to what he represented, a sign of his direction, of Christ's message, of the desire to strengthen the conscience of the faith and, above all, not to think about adulterations and structural changes."

"Non ci sono due Ratzinger, ce n'è uno solo che pratica la teologia non contro ma con la Chiesa. Per scrivere la sua biografia ho intervistato più di cento persone che lo conoscono, sono andate a scuola con lui, hanno studiato sotto di lui o per lui. E come giornalista che lo ha accompagnato per quasi 30 anni, sono convinto che questa definizione sia sbagliata."

"Am Rhein, am Rhein, da wachsen unsre Reben; Gesegnet sey der Rhein! Da wachsen sie am Ufer hin, und geben Uns diesen Labewein."

"Der Winter ist ein rechter Mann, Kernfest und auf die Dauer."

"Ach die Natur schuf mich im Grimme, Sie gab mir nichts — als eine schöne Stimme!"

"Aus nichts wird nichts, das merke wohl, Wenn aus dir etwas werden soll."

"Greif' nicht leicht in ein Wespennest, Doch wenn du greifst, so stehe fest."

"Wenn jemand eine Reise thut, So kann er was verzählen."

"The degree of pleasure which may result from the perusal of a work, depends not only upon the variety of the subject, but likewise upon the purity and graces of style. We must resign all pretensions to taste and sentiment, if we did not prefer a well-told tale to a lame and tedious narration. Of late, however, the just esteem in which an elegant diction is held, has been so far abused, that authors, relying on the fluency of their language, have paid no attention to the matter which they proposed, but deceived the public with a dry and uninstructive performance."

"It is very natural to overlook that which is near home, and as it were within our reach, especially when the mind looks forward, on discoveries which it reckons more important, in proportion as they are more remote."

"Born to live our stated time on this globe, every one who puts a premature period to our existence here, offends the laws of the Creator. The passions are wisely implanted in our breast for our preservation; and revenge, in particular, guards us against the encroachments of others. Savages do not give up the right of retaliating injuries; but civilized societies confer on certain individuals the power and the duty to revenge their wrongs. Still, even in the most polished countries of Europe, this method of administring justice is not sufficient in all cases. Such is the imperfection of human institutions, that the public avenger of wrongs oft lifts his hand against the sacred rights of the whole community. On that occasion all civil agreements are dissolved, every man assumes his rights, and give free course to the passions. Even in private life there are occasions where this sacred principle of revenge is of infinite service in the best regulated community. Nothing is more common than oppressions, affronts, and injuries against which the law provides no remedy; nothing more frequent, than that a set men are powerful enough to wrest the laws to the disadvantage of the wretched and friendless. These instances would be still more numerous, and be carried to the most detestable pitch of tyranny, if this dread did not with-hold them, that the injured party may resume that power of redressing his wrongs, which he sees so inadequately exercised by his representative. He that attempts another's property, runs the risk of being killed without a trial by the person whom he robs; and the fear of the sword or the cane, hath often kept villains within bounds, who are invulnerable to the attacks of the law."

"It is unhappy enough that the unavoidable consequence of all our voyages of discovery, has always been the loss of a number of innocent lives; but this heavy injury done to the little uncivilized communities which Europeans have visited, is trifling when compared to the irretrievable harm entailed upon them by corrupting their morals. If these evils were in some measure compensated by the introduction of some real benefit in these countries, or by the abolition of some other immoral customs among their inhabitants, we might at least comfort ourselves, that what they lost on one hand, they gained on the other; but I fear that hitherto our intercourse has been wholly disadvantageous to the nations of the South Seas; and that those communities have been the least injured, who have always kept aloof from us, and whose jealous disposition did not suffer our sailors to become too familiar among them, as if they had perceived in their countenances that levity of disposition, and that spirit of debauchery, with which they are generally reproached."

"It is the natural fault of young people to think too well of mankind [...]."

"A man wholly destitute of philanthropy is a monster, justly detested by all mankind; but another, entirely incapable of anger, is a sheepish wretch, liable to be insulted by every mean-spirited villain."

"[...] each vulgar opinion, proved to be erroneous, is an approximation to truth [...]."

"When we saw the most beautiful fishes of the sea, the dolphin and bonito, in pursuit of the flying fish, and when these forsook their native element to seek for shelter in air, the application to human nature was obvious. What empire is not like a tumultuous ocean, where the great in all the magnificence and pomp of power, continually persecute and contrive the destruction of the defenceless? - Sometimes we saw this picture continued still farther, when the poor fugitives met with another set of enemies in the air, and became the prey of birds, by endeavouring to escape the jaws of fishes."

"Of course it is perfectly clear that the twelve years of Hitler will be with us as long as there are Germans. Even if we ourselves would be inclined to draw a line, this twelve-year period will always cling to us. It has been a disaster and the crimes have continued to damage us. But it is also true that these twelve years and the criminal traits of that time do not make up the whole of our history, that this has been a deplorable derailment, that we basically only think back with sadness about this phase, that this is just a past that does not want to pass, that German history does not accumulate in this phase, but that there were centuries of German efficiency and German peacefulness before.[...] This, too, is part of this story that we should acknowledge."

"Many politicians, but also church leaders and do-gooders who are blind to the facts, played down the problem of a lack of integration for a long time, some even glossed it over. All camps have ignored the risk of integration, and to a large extent they still do - very often against their better judgment. Anyone who speaks truths too early is discredited and may experience a wave of indignation - like Jörg Schönbohm in the 1990s when he pointed out the danger of ghettos… We have to work hard to ensure that emigrants become Germans, that is, not only master our language, but also make our culture, history and general manners our own. This is much more than just living together multicultural."

"I ask you: were the Nazis right-wing? I think that is a fundamental mistake, by the way, also by you. The Nazis were not right, the Nazis were a left party. National-socialist!"

"Multi-cultural has failed - because foreigners do not accept or even tolerate German culture alongside their own. That was foreseeable for years, but it was deliberately kept quiet and belittled. It is not the Germans who are the idiots, but those politicians and do-gooders who have indulged in multicultural dreams for decades."

"Germany is on the way to a western ‘GDR light’. . . . Citizens, on the barricades! We must not allow everything to go further downhill, helpless politicians let the country rot. All Germans should be our fellow Leipzigers Discover role models, adopt their slogan of autumn thirteen years ago: We are the people!"

"Since we Germans have low self-esteem, we didn't dare ask immigrants to make efforts to integrate. In this respect, we have guided the Isolation Trend Advancement. Many politicians hoped that foreigners who “remained authentic” would stir up Germany in a positive way."

"The current situation in the former GDR is in fact completely different than it was in our country after 1945. The regime dwarfed people for almost half a century, ruined their upbringing, their training. Whether someone calls himself a lawyer or an economist, pedagogue, psychologist, sociologist, even a doctor or engineer, it doesn't matter. His knowledge is largely useless. In most cases, there is no professional perspective today in the areas in which one has been trained. We can forgive the politically and characteristically burdened their sins, forgive and forget everything. It will be of no use, because many people are no longer usable because of their lack of specialist knowledge. They simply have not learned anything that they could bring into a free-market society."