Angela Merkel > Quotes

“Every person who comes is a human being and has the right to be treated as such.”
― Angela Merkel

“The Russian contribution to peace in Ukraine is not sufficient. [German Chancellor commenting on 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea]”
― Angela Merkel

“Islam is part of Germany.”
― Angela Merkel

“What does freedom mean to me? This question has occupied me my entire life. Naturally, politically, because freedom needs democratic conditions, without democracy there is no freedom, no rule of law, no protection of human rights. But this question also occupies me on another level. Freedom, for me, is finding out where my own limits are, and pushing my own limits. Freedom is for me not to stop learning, not to have to stand still but to be allowed to continue, even after leaving politics.” - Angela Merkel”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021

“Vielfalt und Unterschiede sind Ausdruck gelebter Freiheit.”
― Angela Merkel, Was also ist mein Land? Drei Reden

“A good compromise is one where everybody makes a contribution.”
― Angela Merkel

“After the end of the war she made her way back to her mother and sister under very challenging conditions. Between the end of March 1945 and her arrival in the village in October of the same year, the family received no sign of life from my mother. She often said that the thing she was most afraid of—she was only seventeen at the time—was being raped by the Soviet soldiers that she encountered along the way.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“raised to mark German unity. From Schöneberg in West Berlin, the peal of the Freedom Bell was broadcast in the square in front of the Reichstag. A replica of the famous Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, financed in large part by donations from Americans, this bell had hung in Schöneberg’s town hall since October 1950. To this day, it bears the inscription “That this world under God shall have a new birth of freedom,” echoing President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in 1863, at the turning point in the American Civil War. The inscription had become reality for us, too. The GDR was history. There was only one German state now.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“Tanto es así que el resultado fue insuperable en cuanto a mezquindad, estrechez de miras, mal gusto y —sí, eso también— falta de humor.”
― Angela Merkel, Libertad: Memorias (1954 – 2021)

“Even though the two German states had existed since 1949, it was only the building of the Wall in 1961 that fundamentally changed my family’s situation, as it did that of millions of other people. It condemned those of us in the GDR to impotence. I remember, for example, the days of the devastating flooding in Hamburg a few months later, in February 1962, when my mother was terribly worried about her mother and sister—and couldn’t do anything about it. Our families had simply been separated from one another. In order to maintain some kind of contact, my grandmother and my mother wrote weekly letters to each other. After my grandmother’s death in 1978, my aunt continued the tradition.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“since I wasn’t allowed to eat at school.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“For a long time I couldn’t imagine writing such a book. That first changed in 2015, at least a little. Back then, in the night between September 4 and 5, I had decided not to turn away the refugees coming from Hungary at the German–Austrian border.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“Dejé claro que en el transcurso del siglo XXI sería necesaria una descarbonización considerable de nuestras economías.”
― Angela Merkel, Libertad: Memorias (1954 – 2021)

“Der Ansatz für Multikulti ist gescheitert, absolut gescheitert!”
― Angela Merkel

“In Moscow we met up with a group of Komsomol’tsy. The first thing they said to us was: “It’s completely impossible for Germany to stay divided. It would be completely surreal to build a wall between Leningrad and Moscow or through the two cities. It’ll last for a while, but one day Germany will be reunited.” I was speechless at the idea that young people from the country supposedly responsible for the division of Germany saw it for what it was: unnatural.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“the Pioneer Organization, the state youth organization for pupils up to seventh grade.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“We can do this, and if something stands in our way it has to be overcome, it has to be worked on.” That was how I put it in my summer press conference on August 31, 2015.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“Nada me angustiaba más que no ser capaz de formular una pregunta razonable por saber muy poco sobre una nación.”
― Angela Merkel, Libertad: Memorias (1954 – 2021)

“You always had to assume that someone was watching, that there were informants among us who were reporting our innocent meet-ups to the Stasi,”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“De mis conversaciones saqué la siguiente conclusión: con Trump no habría cooperación para un mundo interconectado. Él consideraba todo desde la perspectiva de un inversor inmobiliario, lo que había sido antes de meterse en política. Cada propiedad solo podía adjudicársela una vez, y si no la conseguía él, la conseguía otro. Así es como Trump veía el mundo: todos los países participaban en una carrera en la que el logro de uno significaba el fracaso de otro, no creía que la cooperación pudiera incrementar el bienestar común.”
― Angela Merkel, Libertad: Memorias (1954 – 2021)

“La política no es cosa de brujería. La política la hacen las personas, con sus inclinaciones, experiencias, vanidades, debilidades, fortalezas, deseos, sueños, convicciones, valores e intereses. Personas que si quieren llevar a cabo algo, en una democracia deben luchar por una mayoría.”
― Angela Merkel, Libertad: Memorias (1954 – 2021)

“The authoritarian, dictatorial character of the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) state continued to affect German unification. Admittedly, three-quarters of young people made use of their new opportunities for freedom, but there was also a sense of disorientation, along with feelings of inferiority toward young West Germans and a longing for authority figures. The collapse of the GDR left a roaring void in many people; they lacked the learned and experienced values indispensable for coexistence in a democratic society. Overnight, teachers had to communicate new values and a new vision of history, the state, and society. Many of them struggled, and had little authority over their pupils. In some cases violent perpetrators found open support among the population as a whole, leading them to believe that what they were doing was somehow acceptable.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021

“At the time I was so open that I wanted to tell everybody everything. That changed during the course of my life.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“His father had owned a medium-sized textile company, which had been nationalized in 1972. After that, he worked there as general manager. I gained a completely new insight into the textile industry and the entrepreneurship that had previously existed, but I also saw my father-in-law’s frustration at the inefficiency of business after nationalization.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“combatir al otro lado de las fronteras de la UE las causas de la huida.”
― Angela Merkel, Libertad: Memorias (1954 – 2021)

“I stepped down from office on December 8, 2021. After sixteen years I left it,”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“natural gas,”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 - 2021

“Nineteen seventy-three, the year that the Basic Treaty came into force, was also when the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) began. A total of thirty-five countries participated: seven members of the Warsaw Pact, fifteen members of NATO, and thirteen neutral countries. The conference ended in 1975 with the signing of the Helsinki Final Act, which set out common aims for culture, science, the economy, environmental protections, and disarmament, in order to improve security and the enforcement of human rights in Europe during the Cold War. The far-reaching effect of this document, which was felt beyond the end of the Cold War and long into my time as chancellor, will play a role later on. At the time, I could neither anticipate nor recognize its importance.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021

“Y es que la libertad de culto es parte esencial de toda democracia.”
― Angela Merkel, Libertad: Memorias (1954 – 2021)

“On July 16, 1961, my Hamburg grandmother turned seventy. For her birthday she had asked for a trip to Bavaria with my family. No one could have guessed that this would be our last trip to West Germany together.”
― Angela Merkel, Freedom: Memoirs 1954 – 2021