Helmut Schmidt
Democracy is not the end point of mankind. There may be developments in many different directions in the coming centuries. Democracy has only existed for about 200 years. It started out with the American Declaration of Independence. The Americans got their ideas from the Europeans, in the main from the French, the Dutch and the British.Collection: Independence
The concept of multiculturalism is difficult to make fit with a democratic society.Collection: Society
The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.
People with visions should go to the doctor.
I remember the youth movement in 1968. It started on American university campuses as a protest against the Vietnam war, then came to Paris, Frankfurt and Berlin. Within a year, you had an uprising of youth against their elders.
The British are very stubborn. The Queen, the Commonwealth, and the special relationship with the U.S. is much more important than Europe.
Since I came an adult - for more than 45 years - Marcus Aurelius has been my great idol.
The German public knows me quite well. I have been in their kitchens and living rooms for years.
Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take many small steps.
I was in government for 13 years and in that time only once met the head of the German security services, and that was because he was an old friend. Otherwise, I carefully avoided having anything to do with these people. They are unavoidable but not really necessary.
Britain is less European-minded than Greece.
My education has been pro-England. I have been an England-minded citizen of Hamburg, and I am still in a way English-minded, but I have been disappointed by the Brits over the years.
The British claim to have a special relationship with the U.S., but if you mention this in Washington, no one knows what you are talking about.
When I became a soldier, I was drafted in 1937, and instead of being released two years later, I had to stay on because the war had started in the meantime. I was a soldier for more than eight years, as long a time as I was Chancellor.
Americans tend to feel satisfied within the wide boundaries of that huge, big country.
I had a Jewish grandfather. We managed to hide this fact from the authorities by falsifying documents, my father and I. His father was Jewish, but because my father was an illegitimate child, it was rather easy to pretend that his father was unknown.
Farmers are always conservative. They stick to what they have learned from their fathers and from their grandfathers. This is the same all over the globe.
The critical thing about Western democracy is the fact that you usually have a transition of power without bloodshed. That is an enormous advantage. But still, democracy as we know it was only invented recently in the West, historical speaking. It did not really work in ancient Rome. It functioned for less than 200 years in ancient Athens.
Particularly since the computerization of the world, the impact of media has grown enormously. The printed books and the printed media have become less important. Why should somebody read Laozi or Confucius if he can Google?
If I ever had to emigrate, I would probably go to America.
Germany is one of the medium powers of the world. It is a non-nuclear power. It is in a lower class than the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom and others.
In a mass television democracy - which all of us nowadays have - it is impossible to take basic political decisions with long-term consequences without the public knowing it, without the public understanding at least some of it, without the public forming its judgment, heterogeneous as it may be.
I will not be remembered in history. I have not been shot. I have not launched any great tragedy or victory. I have not borne any great defeat. It was a very normal - it still is a very normal - human life of a political leader.
People who have visions should go see a doctor.Collection: Doctors
Politicians and journalists share the same fate in that they often understand tomorrow the things they talk about today.Collection: Fate
Political leaders normally act by making convincing speeches.Collection: Leader
If somewhere is a deficiency the normal American answer would have been well then, let's spend some more money, build some more weapons and deploy them. That's the normal way of thinking of the military, in America not only but also all over the place, but America or Russia or other countries.Collection: Country
I hate the idea that someone think the destruction of Chicago as strategic affair, the destruction of Hamburg as a tactical one.Collection: Hate
Population growth and the proliferation of mega-cities around the world redefines the entire global security agenda.Collection: Cities
I have had and still do have every confidence in Paul Nitze, a man whom I have known for decades, one of the wisest servants of the American nation but always willing and capable of taking into account the interests of their allies, whoever: the British, or the French or the Germans or others.Collection: Men
Ronad Reagan might go down to history as a man who in the end of this administration brought about the first nuclear arms reduction treaty, the first arms reduction treaty at all in the modern world, and this is quite something.Collection: Men
In those years,'80 was the, at the turn of '79/'80 you had the invasion of Afghanistan. It was the period in which the Americans attempt to liberate, to, to liberate the hostages in Iran and all these, all these things, the atmosphere was freezing - boycott of the Olympic Games and all that.Collection: Games
The Alliance and NATO is two different things. France is a member of the Alliance. NATO is an organization not mentioned in the North Atlantic Treaty, has been built up in the course of history, in the course of history France has left that organization. Normally the Alliance has been lead by consent, building up consensus on important issues of questions, in many instances over the last 30 years that I have followed events closely. In many, many cases was being done under the spiritual guidance of the American President, that is true, but sometimes also at the guidance of others.Collection: Spiritual
President [Ronald] Reagan never has tried to become an expert on military matters. He never has endeavored to learn the most important details in that field, which lead to a situation in which his aides played a much greater roles than aides would have played under President Ford or let us say in the whole Nixon-Ford-Kissinger era.Collection: Military
Leonid Breznev was an old man and despite his own military experience in World War II, he on the other hand was not very close to the military.Collection: Military
Some of the American military obviously were thinking in terms of fighting a nuclear war. I was opposed to that.Collection: Military
The catch word is equilibrium again, informed the field what are conventional weapons or nuclear weapons of different qualities. You cannot make up for a actual or perceived disequilibrium in the conventional field by having more nuclear weapons.Collection: Quality
I have talked about the deterioration of the atmosphere between Washington and Moscow. It was quite clear that in the year 1980, which at the same time was an election year in America, these negotiations would not go very far, but immediately after the start of the Reagan administration we in Bonn started to try influencing them on the medium-range nuclear weapons negotiations, and we told them that in our view the best outcome would be zero-zero, zero on either side.Collection: Zero
Admirals and Generals always want more ships and more weapons and they take the arguments where they can find them.Collection: Want
President [Ronald] Reagan told me he would negotiate and negotiate and negotiate with the Soviets, and I believed him.Collection: President
What I do see, for instance, is that the French are not very happy with the ... I am happy but they are not and I understand why they are not happy. They still believe in some nuclear strategic formulas which they have inherited from General De Gaulle and they have started the process of rethinking, they haven't gone very far.Collection: Believe
I think that the solution of the question of numerical superiority of Russian conventional forces has to be solved.Collection: Thinking
Leonid Brezhnev did not understand the enormous political importance of the decision to produce and afterwards deploy the SS-20s.Collection: Decision
[Ronald] Reagan seems to be a man of some basic convictions and on the other hand willing to let others do the ground homework, the detailed work.Collection: Men
I've never been a classic Gaulist! Not a Gaulist at all.Collection: Classic