Helmut Kohl Quotes

I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing someone to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go.

Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.

Let's start to have a grown up debate in this country about who we are and where we want to go and what kind of country we want to build.

One culture I find fascinating to juxtapose against American culture is the culture of Germany. They've gone through a long process through their art, poetry, public discourse, their politics, of owning the fact of their complicity in what happened in World War II. It's still a topic of everyday conversation in Germany.

I think that a lot of kids today focus on impressing each other. And while that's really nice, you also have to think about your future, about getting into a good school.

But as a German - and I am German-born - we Germans are condemned once again to be radical revisionists.

The SA is, and remains, Germany's destiny.

The German national character is a favorite subject of character experts, probably because the less mature a nation, the more she is an object of criticism and not of history.

Every nation has a vision it lives for and is prepared to make all sacrifices. One may call it National purpose, … It is something which does not change. If it changes, a nation dies. It is supreme and therefore the nation acts and reacts with the limits laid down by it. It is the vision which allows a nation to build its future.

No choice we can make as a nation lies between our history and our geography. We can hardly change either of them. They are immutable. The only choice we can make as a nation is the choice about our future.

I think that if a United States of Europe were to be formed, it would be in our interests to fight for it, as all our old traditions would remain in such a united Europe, whereas if we were to start now as part of the Russian Empire, everything that had ever been in Germany would disappear.

America needs a long-term vision.

The necessity for rules and strictness is a way of dealing with an enormously powerful impulse: Germans are among the most emotional people on the planet. Maybe it has to do with the fact that, as a nation, they are always drawn back to nature and the forest.

I am almost German now.

One of the most inexplicable characteristics of the Germans is their love of kitsch.

Germany is, of course, my country.

I feel German, that's for sure. I grew up in Germany, I went to school in Germany and most of my friends are there. I play for Germany.

Knowing who we are helps us plan for who we want to be and where we want to go.

When you're a kid, what you learn in school about being German has a sort of heaviness about it, and you have a sort of guilt with you.

Germany is a nation which must always win.

To us Germans everything is religion. What we do we do not merely with our hands and brains, but with our hearts and souls. This has often become a tragic fate for us.

I love Germany so much that I preferred when there were two.

This pride of race is a quality which the German, fundamentally, does not possess. The reason for this is that for these last three centuries the country has been torn by internal dissension and religious wars and has been subjected to a variety of foreign influences, to the influence, for example, of Christianity-for Christianity is not a natural religion for the Germans, but a religion that has been imported and which strikes no responsive chord in their hearts and is foreign to the inherent genius of the race. (13th February 1945)

Remember not all Germans were Nazis.

Almost 20 percent of the people living in Germany today have a foreign background. The problem is that Germany can't really offer foreigners an identity because the Germans hardly have a national identity themselves. That is certainly a result of Auschwitz.