German Quotes

I've never looked at a suburban building as being a minor building and an urban building as being a major building.

I wanted to improve the suburban office building; to create a great urban space in a suburban environment with all that implies about interaction, collaboration and creativity.

I strive for an architecture from which nothing can be taken away.

German and English firms operate internationally, while French firms do not. The only place where they all have work is in China. Anybody can sell himself in China!

For me, though, the fun is over when I get the job.

For me, drawing generates thinking and vice versa.

Critics are entitled to have an opinion, but how can they judge how comfortable a building is? No critic is smart enough to judge how a building will perform over time.

Creativity has more to do with the elimination of the inessential than with inventing something new.

Chinese buildings are like American buildings, with big footprints. People don't care about daylight or fresh air.

America has always imported history.

A building is hard to judge. It takes many years to find out whether it works. It's not as simple as asking the people in the office whether they like it.

Sometimes I have to accept a job I don't really want. Hardly anybody comes up to you with a commission; it's all competitions these days.

Higher ceilings allow the use indirect lighting, which is much healthier and reduces glare.

Every building is a prototype. No two are alike.

A city building, you experience when you walk; a suburban building, you experience when you drive.

I think the younger generation, the people poised to dominate the workforce, are more socially conscious. They are more demanding in terms of environment and how that environment contributes to their life.

A good engineer thinks in reverse and asks himself about the stylistic consequences of the components and systems he proposes.

The secret of living in peace with all people lies in the art of understanding each one by his own individuality.

Why you kill me? I never did you anything. Not kill me! I beg not to be locked up. Never let me out of my prison - not kill me! You kill me before I understand what life is. You must tell me why you locked me up!

Many cats are the death of the mouse.

I want to be a soldier as my father was.

We are known as one of the few truly antifascist families in Munich.

My friends, who sleep for all eternity; we do not forget you.

Unending was the stream, unending the misery, unending the sorrow.

The course hitherto pursued in musical aesthetics has nearly always been hampered by the false assumption that the object was not so much to inquire into what is beautiful in music as to describe the feelings which music awakens.

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

Grant that the true organ with which the beautiful is apprehended is the imagination, and it follows that all arts are likely to affect the feelings indirectly.

An art aims, above all, at producing something beautiful which affects not our feelings but the organ of pure contemplation, our imagination.

What good to me is the festive garment of freedom when I am in a slave's smock at home?

Thus the public use of reason and freedom is nothing but a dessert, a sumptuous dessert.