West Germany Quotes & Sayings

Once their gaze turned back toward Europe, the puzzle dissolved: West Germany was the obvious equivalent and, indeed, a splendid candidate for the role of the global plan's European shock-absorbing pillar - certainly not Britain. — Yanis Varoufakis

When I am talking to people from Germany, we should know that there are certain things and certain histories that are very important for people. If you look at all the Muslims living in the West, they didn't react in a violent way. They don't like what they saw but they are citizens like you and me and they look at it and say: "This is a silly video but we are not going to react." — Tariq Ramadan

The people in East Germany have lived through so many changes in the last 15 years like never before in the country, and they did this often with great enthusiasm. But in the West we also have a high degree of transformations. — Angela Merkel

I fear for the future of the West if it loses its faith. You cannot defend Western freedom on the basis of moral relativism, the only morality left when we lose our mooring in a sacred ontology or a divine-human covenant. No secular morality withstood Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. No secular morality today has the force to withstand the sustained onslaught of ruthless religious extremism. Neither market economics nor liberal democracy has the power, in and of itself, to inspire people to make sacrifices for the common good. — Jonathan Sacks

It is always the case that when something emerges - which, of course, from the perspective of the former West Germany looks very different - then people say, 'She hasn't told us this yet' and 'She hasn't told us that yet.' I don't know - maybe there are other things I didn't talk about because no one ever asked me. — Angela Merkel

Poland is smaller than France or Germany, for example. What would a common foreign policy look like? Would the trip I took to Kiev last week require a detour through Brussels in the future? Would it require approval from Brussels? While the West, for its part, doesn't think twice about other countries when it comes to its projects? — Lech Kaczynski

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. — Andrei Codrescu

I grew up spending time at my grandmother's farm in Germany and she lived a few kilometers away from the border between east and west Germany. It was so strange that roads which used to connect two towns now ended in the middle. — Matthea Harvey

I defy my honored opponents to give me the name of a single man imprisoned in the United States, Great Britain, or West Germany for being an atheist. But in former communist countries, millions of our Christian brothers and sisters in faith have passed through jails or been killed. Who has fought for freedom and obtained it - atheists or Christians? — Richard Wurmbrand

Our country is Germany
one country that should be reunited. We don't belong to Moscow or to the west. We belong to ourselves and I have never betrayed that. This tunnel has taken every ounce of courage we have. We're not cowards. — Jennifer A. Nielsen

And of course, in West Germany, they made every effort that people who came from the East would get jobs and would get a comfortable existence. That was part of the Cold War - and part of the winning side of the Cold War. — Stefan Heym

I believe that the Europeans, first and foremost, the Germans, will also understand me. Let me remind you that in the course of political consultations on the unification of East and West Germany ... some nations that were then and are now Germany's allies did not support the idea of unification. Our nation, however, unequivocally supported the sincere, unstoppable desire of the Germans for national unity. I am confident that you have not forgotten this, and I expect that the citizens of Germany will also support the aspiration of the Russians, of historical Russia, to restore unity. — Vladimir Putin

But neither will anyone ask us whether we will it or do not will it when the spiritual strength of the West fails and the West starts to come apart at the seams, when this moribund pseudocivilization collapses into itself, pulling all forces into confusion and allowing them to suffocate in madness.
Whether such a thing occurs or does not occur, this depends solely on whether we as a historical-spiritual Volk will ourselves, still and again, or whether we will ourselves no longer. Each individual has a part in deciding this, even if, and precisely if, he seeks to evade this decision.
But it is our will that our Volk fulfill its historical mission. — Martin Heidegger

More riveting to me in the end than the politics of Berlin was the vast social experiment its division had become... it was possible to have freedom and plenty in the West and craft an empty life; it was possible to "have nothing" in the East and create a life of intimacy and dignity and beauty. — Krista Tippett

There are also people who lived in either side of Germany, but who never had or have any relationship with the other side whether it was former East or former West Germany. — Christian Schwochow

After further conferences that late spring the following plan was drawn up. Speidel, almost alone among the Army conspirators in the West, survived to describe it: An immediate armistice with the Western Allies but not unconditional surrender. German withdrawal in the West to Germany. Immediate suspension of the Allied bombing of Germany. Arrest of Hitler for trial before a German court. Overthrow of Nazi rule. Temporary assumption of executive power in Germany by the resistance forces of all classes under the leadership of General Beck, Goerdeler, and the trade-union representative, Leuschner. No military dictatorship. Preparation of a "constructive peace" within the framework of a United States of Europe. In the East, continuation of the war. Holding a shortened line between the mouth of the Danube, the Carpathian Mountains, the River Vistula and Memel. — William L. Shirer

Joseph Goebbels had artfully accomplished what all good propagandists must, convincing the world that their version of reality was reasonable and their opponents' version biased. In doing that, Goebbels had not only created a compelling vision of the new Germany but also undercut the Nazis' opponents in the West - whether they were American Jews in New York City or members of Parliament in London or anxious Parisians - making all of them seem shrill, hysterical, and misinformed. As thousands of Americans returned home from the games that fall, many of them felt as one quoted in a German propaganda publication did: "As for this man Hitler. . . . Well I believe we should all like to take him back to America with us and have him organize there just as he has done in Germany. — Daniel James Brown

Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting — Erich Maria Remarque

2.2 billion worth of military equipment had been stripped from U.S. Forces in West Germany and America and shipped to Israel in an unprecedented day and night airlift. — George Scratchley Brown

At German unification, we were lucky to get so much help from West Germany. Now, we have the good fortune of being able to help each other in Europe. — Angela Merkel

One of its most distinctive features was the ninety-six meters high and twelve thousand tons heavy sandstone dome that stood the test of time and wars until it came down during the bombing of Saxony by Anglo-American allied forces during the Second World War. Only the altar, a relief description of Jesus' agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the chancel behind it survived. The church then lay dormant for more than forty-five years before it was restored to its former glory as Communist rule enveloped Germany. One of the reasons for the delay was the tensions that ensued before the demolition of the Berlin Wall that divided East and West Germany. — K.T. Tomb

The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. — Gordon Sinclair

Played out over time, the differences in growth and middle-class prosperity between countries that have decreased incentives (through increased income redistribution) and those that have not are startling. Look at the differences between Europe and the U.S.; East and West Germany; and Communist China versus Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China today. There are enormous and compounding costs to dulling incentives for entrepreneurial risk-taking with few, if any, exceptions. — Edward Conard

If we had had time and the occasion to develop a new socialism in the GDR, socialism with a human face, with democracy, this might have been an example also to West Germany. The development would have run the other way. — Stefan Heym

There is always an element of realpolitik that has to be present in the conduct of any nation's national security affairs. At the same time, we have to also have a balance between realpolitik and Wilsonian principles of freedom and democracy and human rights. And maintaining that balance is the greatest challenge that we in the West, including the Federal Republic of Germany, have to face because it's many times a very difficult decision-making process. — John McCain

When I turned 11, we had to leave East Germany overnight because of the political orientation of my father. Now I was going to school in West Germany, which was American-occupied at that time. There in school, all children were required to learn English and not Russian. To learn Russian had been difficult, but English was impossible for me. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

When I was 11 years old, my family had to leave East Germany and begin a new life in West Germany overnight. Until my father could get back into his original profession as a government employee, my parents operated a small laundry business in our little town. I became the laundry delivery boy. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

IN 1959, Oppenheimer attended a conference in Rheinfelden, West Germany, sponsored by the Congress on Cultural Freedom. He and twenty other world-renowned intellectuals gathered in the luxurious Saliner Hotel on the banks of the Rhine near Basel to discuss the fate of the Western industrialized world. Safe in this cloistered environment, Oppenheimer broke his silence on nuclear weapons and spoke with uncharacteristic clarity about how they were seen and valued in American society. "What are we to make of a civilization which has always regarded ethics as an essential part of human life," he asked, but "which has not been able to talk about the prospect of killing almost everybody except in prudential and game-theoretical terms? — Kai Bird

If the purpose of the wall was to destroy Berlin, Herr Ulbricht and his cohorts have erred sadly. Berlin is not only going to continue to exist - it's going to grow and grow and grow. Its ties to West Germany will not be severed. — Robert Kennedy

My father served as an Army doctor in West Germany in the late '50s and early '60s. As a result, he and my mother - both native southerners - were acutely aware of what had happened during the Holocaust. — Greg Iles

The Marshall Plan was the ultimate weapon deployed on this economic front. After the war, the German economy was in crisis, threatening to bring down the rest of Western Europe. Meanwhile, so many Germans were drawn to socialism that the U.S. government opted to split Germany into two parts rather than risk losing it all, either to collapse or to the left. In West Germany, the U.S. government used the Marshall Plan to build a capitalist system that was not meant to create fast and easy new markets for Ford and Sears but, rather, to be so successful on its own terms that Europe's market economy would thrive and socialism would be drained of its appeal. — Naomi Klein

I grew up in Germany for a little while, and all my German friends said that Seattle, weather and energy-wise, is a lot like West Germany. It's true. — Daniel Breaker

I tell you, Colonel, we got to win this war. What will happen, do you think, if we lose? Do you think the country will ever get back together again?
Doubt it. Would it too deep. The differences ... If they win there'll be two countries, like France and Germany in Europe, and the border will be armed. Then there'll be a third country in the West, and that one will be the balance of power. — Michael Shaara

I didn't actually know what the protesters in the West really wanted. It was fantastic here, so much freedom, and that was what they were calling musty, middle-class, and fascistic, a bleak period. Bleak was what the GDR was, and it alone had adopted, almost unchanged, Nazi Germany's methods of intimidation and ideas about propaganda and the use of force. — Gerhard Richter

I was an Army intelligence agent and a veteran during the Cold War, assigned to West Germany. I was the chairman of the National Commission on Homeland Security and Terrorism for the United States for five years. I was a person who has dealt extensively with these homeland security issues. I was a governor during the 9/11 attack. — Jim Gilmore

West Germany's Briegel hasn't been able to get past anyone yet - that's his trademark. — John Helm

My last wish is that Germany realize its entity and that an understanding be reached between East and West. I wish peace to the world. — Joachim Von Ribbentrop

American critics of welfare statism are often surprised to learn that countries like West Germany, with a much more comprehensive welfare state and a statistically larger public sector, have fewer government employees per capita than the United States does. — Robert Kuttner

Honscheid came over from West Germany for the first Hawaiian World Cup and discovered jumping, which was new to him, although Mike Horgan and I were jumping in 1974 and 1975. There — Eric Von Hippel

You know, North Korea situation is far worse than East Germany, and South Korea is weaker than West Germany. — Kim Dae-jung

If once again Germany destabilizes Europe, then Germany will be not be divided again, but wiped off the map. East and West have the necessary technology in order to enforce this verdict. If Germany begins again, there is no other solution. — Lech Walesa

We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on Earth
one for every five-hundred Americans; three times as many as are in England, four times as many as are in West Germany, twenty-one times as many as there are in Japan. We have more litigation, but I am not sure that we have more justice. No resources of talent and training in our own society, even including the medical care, is more wastefully or unfairly distributed than legal skills. Ninety percent of our lawyers serve 10 percent of our people. We are over-lawyered and under-represented. — Jimmy Carter

The biggest trading partner of the United States is not West Germany or Japan, it's right here. — Brian Mulroney

Even in West Germany in the beginning, people wanted a kind of socialism. — Stefan Heym

The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently," he said. "The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence. — Walter Isaacson

Germany has traditionally played a very constructive role regarding E.U. ties with Russia and the West as a whole with Russia. — Sergei Lavrov

According to our anarchist writers, world conflict should lead to creative chaos. If such chaos is intelligently exploited, a free society will emerge. But when I looked about me, I was forced to accept that the preconditions of creative chaos did not exist, neither did the intelligent exploiters. Chaos presupposes a vacuum of power, yet bourgeois power was gaining everywhere, and so was the military might of America, for whom West Germany was by now the arsenal and craven ally in the world war that appeared inevitable. As to the intelligent exploiters, they were too busy making profits and driving Mercedes cars to avail themselves of the opportunities we had created for them. — John Le Carre

Why don't people talk about Japan's wartime emperor Hirohito in the same breath as people do about Germany's Hitler? After all, both had an almost similar role in instigating World War II. In the West, whether it is good or bad, people take full responsibility for their actions, and they have total freedom to express their true feelings. On the contrary, here in the East, it is always the small people who take the blame and are made scapegoats. That is, for you and me, the difference between the West and the East, my friend."

My 7th book is coming....! — Tim I. Gurung

A foreman in the East wouldn't know how many workers he would have the next day, because part of his working force had left the system to go to West Germany. — Stefan Heym

When I first began visiting West Germany in the early 1980s, I was startled by the contrast between Birmingham, where I went to school, and affluent Cologne. My host family, the lovely Schumachers, always had an opulent array of grapes on the table; they were better dressed than anyone I knew in Britain. — Luke Harding

When people speak these days, about an inevitable "Clash of Civilizations" in our world, what they often mean, I fear, is an inevitable "Clash of Religions." But I would use different terminology altogether. The essential problem, as I see it, in relations between the Muslim world and the West is "A Clash of Ignorance." And what I would prescribe -- as an essential first step -- is a concentrated educational effort.

Address by His Highness the Aga Khan to the Tutzing Evangelical Academy Upon Receiving the "Tolerance" Award - 20 May 2006 (Tutzing, Germany) — Aga Khan

Austrians were allowed to paper over their pasts and portray themselves as unwilling participants. They felt sorry for themselves, and for the proud family names sullied with the taint of Nazi collaboration. The Cold War began in earnest, and the West was eager to hang on to Austria. A 1948 amnesty brought a premature end to Austrian de-Nazification. Austrians began to deny their jubilant welcome of Hitler and to claim that Austria had been "occupied" by Germany, like — Anne-Marie O'Connor

The neighborhood-towns were part of larger ethnic states. To the north of the Loop was Germany. To the northwest was Poland. To the west were Italy and Israel. To the southwest were Bohemia and Lithuania. And to the south was ireland ...
you could always tell, even with your eyes closed, which state you were in by the odors of the food stores and the open kitchen windows, the sound of the foreign or familiar language, and by whether a stranger hit you in the head with a rock. — Mike Royko

It is not in the interest of the German people or in the interest of world peace that Germany should become a pawn or a partner in a military struggle for power between the East and the West. — James F. Byrnes

The Islamists had control over territory that was about half the size of the Federal Republic of Germany. For years, we have been putting the lives of our troops on the line, we have taken huge losses and the Europeans cut the budget? If money is more important than the lives of our children, what else is this than the usual arrogance and superficiality? And where is all this terror coming from? It is a result of mistakes the West committed in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1980s, when they armed the Islamic rebels against the Soviet troops. — Yoweri Museveni

November 18, 2014: it's a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China's Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading for Madrid. It arrived on December 9th. Welcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain. — Anonymous