13 quotes
One does not throw out dirty water as long as one doesn't have any clean water.
In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that he did not also limit his stupidity.
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965)
We will never forget. If it takes us five or ten or twenty years, we will never rest until we get our revenge.
I see the significance of the Marshall Plan in the fact that probably for the first time in history a victorious country held out its hand so that the vanquished might rise again.
I wish that an English statesman might once have spoken of us as Western Europeans.
The Soviet Government and the Soviet people should not lend themselves to co-operating in the conversion into a concentration camp of part of a large neighbouring country against the will of its inhabitants.
I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday.
Loggers' Handbook Vol. 36 (1976)
What do I care about my nonsense from yesterday?
Discussion : Mastering the Skills of Moderation (2009)
European integration should not be rigid but as flexible as we can possibly make it. It should not be a straitjacket for the peoples of Europe but should be their common mainstay, a common support for the healthy, individual development of each of them.
I am a German, but I am also, and always have been, a European and have always felt like a European. I have therefore long advocated an understanding with France; I did so, moreover, in the 1920s, during the severest crises, and also in the face of the Reich Government.
Konrad Adenauer: Memoirs 1945-1953 (1966)
An unsteady nation has no friends. The German people seriously worry me. The only thing I can say for them is that they have lived through too much. They have not found peace of mind and stability since the war of 1914-18.
We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.
Attributed
History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided.
Attributed Lend Me Your Ears: Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations (2010)