Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Hermann Josef Adenauer (1876-01-05 – 1967-04-19) was a German statesman. Although his political career spanned 60 years, beginning as early as 1906, he is most noted for his role as Chancellor of West Germany from 1949-1963 and chairman of the Christian Democratic Union from 1950 to 1966. He was the oldest person to be chancellor after the Second World War.

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• We will never forget. If it takes us five or ten or twenty years, we will never rest until we get our revenge.
  • As quoted by General Sir Charles Fergusson in a memorandum (10 July 1945), recalling conversations with Adenauer in 1918-1919, at the end of World War I. As published in Adenauer : The Father of the New Germany (2000) by Charles Williams

• I wish that an English statesman might once have spoken of us as Western Europeans.
  • Adenauer's remarks on an Associated Press interview (5 October 1945)

• Make Europe your revenge.
  • To French PM Guy Mollet after British PM Sir Anthony Eden unilaterally cancelled the Suez operation, thus angering Mollet. (6 November 1956), as quoted in Europe's Troubled Peace, 1945-2000 (2006) by Tom Buchanan, p.102

• In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that he did not also limit his stupidity.
  • As quoted in Through Russian Eyes : President Kennedy's 1036 Days (1973) by Anatoliĭ Andreevich Gromyko, p. 128

• We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon. In an instant age, perhaps we must relearn the ancient truth that patience, too, has its victories.
  • Quoted in The Atlantic Community Quarterly v.14-15 1976-1978, p. 200

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• What do I care about my chitchat from yesterday?

• Behind Magdeburg begins Siberia.