Quotes on Germans

Germany's path to greater military assertiveness has not been linear, and it never will be. Germans do not believe that talking at roundtables solves every problem, but neither do they think that shooting does.

During the course of 1989, more and more East Germans lost their fears of the state's repression and chicanery and went out on the streets. There was no turning back then. It is thanks to their courage the Wall was opened.

The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.

The established politicians, who before the war preached national pride and Christian love, were the first to collaborate with the Germans. But the communists, who as children we'd been taught to fear, kept a resistance movement alive, living and dying true to their ideals.

I feel that we Germans are spending less and less time talking to each other. And even less time listening to each other.

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

I'm just one generation between someone who cheered when Germans were burning and someone who doesn't even know that there is a border. That's a miracle - really is a miracle - and it gets me really emotional.

A modern hero is very ambiguous. I went through some very rough times in Czechoslovakia - the occupation by the Germans at the end of the war. We had people going against their tanks with brooms. Are they nuts, or are they heroes?