The Oppermanns Quotes

“There is nothing the rabble fears more than intelligence. If they understood what is truly terrifying, they would fear ignorance.”
― Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns

“What history had taught him was Amazement. A tremendous amazement that each time those in jeopardy had been so slow in thinking about their safety.”
― Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns

“There was no question but that the Nationalists had carried out their program point by point, that program at whose primitive barbarism people had so often smiled.”
― Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns

“while America, for its part, proved singularly unreceptive to the socialist-realist principle that undergirds them all: the principle that art can, or even must, have a message; and that such art-with-a-message, which will always be dismissed as propaganda, is in fact the only available corrective to the real and actual propaganda of entrenched official power.”
― Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns

“sort. The authority of sober reason is being undermined. The paltry varnish of logic is being scraped away. An epoch is at hand during which the large, partially hyperdeveloped animal, known as man, will revert to his fundamentals. Aren’t you thrilled to be living during these times?” Quietly, he turned his”
― Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns

“Am ungeniertesten gab sich, wie immer, Jacques Lavendel. Breit und faul im bequemsten Sessel lehnend, die listigen, gutmütigen Augen halb geschlossen, hörte er mit spöttischer Nachsicht zu, wie Karl Theodor Hintze die völkische Bewegung in Bausch und Bogen verurteilte. Nach Prokurist Hintze waren ihre Anhänger allesamt Dummköpfe oder Schwindler. Herrn Jacques Lavendels breites Gesicht lächelte aufreizende Duldsamkeit. »Sie werden den Leuten nicht gerecht, lieber Herr Hintze«, sagte er mit seiner freundlichen, heiseren Stimme, den Kopf wiegend. »Das ist ja die Stärke dieser Partei, daß sie die Vernunft ablehnt und an den Instinkt appelliert. Es gehört Intelligenz dazu und Willensstärke, das so konsequent durchzuführen wie diese Burschen. Die Herren verstehen sich auf ihre Kundschaft wie jeder gute Geschäftsmann. Ihre Ware ist schlecht, aber gängig. Und ihre Propaganda, first-class, sage ich Ihnen. Unterschätzen Sie den Führer nicht, Herr Hintze. Das Möbelhaus Oppermann könnte froh sein um so einen Propagandachef.”
― Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns

“This logical belief that the lie is the first principle of politics is certainly enormously interesting.”
― Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns

“The real problem of the masses was not the barbarism of the Nationalists but how to get along without the two extra groschen that the government had deducted from their income.”
― Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns

“Inconsistency and deceit were the underlying characteristics of all the actions of their leaders. Their speech was deceitful, and so was their silence. They got up with a lie, and they went to sleep with a lie. Their discipline was a lie, their code of laws a lie, their judgments a lie, their German a lie, their science a lie, their sense of justice and their faith were lies. Their nationalism, their socialism were lies, their ethical philosophy was a lie, and so was their love. Everything was a lie, only one thing about them was genuine: their hate!”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“Even in the days of the Romans they had considered that a code of laws applicable equally to all men was contrary to the honor of individuals. If they hated the Romans, it was not because the latter wished to impose Roman law but because the Romans wished to impose any law upon them. They preferred to be judged by the decree of one superior person, in whom they trusted, rather than by definite laws, drawn up by the dictates of reason.”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“Everywhere persecutors were making offers to the persecuted to save their positions or their wealth, provided that they might share in the profits. When one came to look at it closely, the entire Nationalist revolution resolved itself into millions of small commercial transactions, conducted on reciprocal terms.”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“Many people had left Germany, but many more had remained. The Nationalists could not kill or imprison all their adversaries, for they comprised two-thirds of the population.”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“Sybil, also, thought Gustav’s caution rather exaggerated. Middle-aged men become suspicious of everything and want their comforts, that was their privilege. She, however, was not so old and would willingly give up a little comfort for the sake of a thrill. Even after she had discounted the ecstasy in Gutwetter’s words, the fact remained that an enormously interesting drama was going on: the unforeseen swamping of a civilized country by the barbarians. She awaited the outcome of this drama with the intense excitement of a child awaiting the scheduled feeding time in front of a cage of wild beasts. She must not miss that drama.”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“Certainly this arson has been managed clumsily and stupidly,” he said. “But everything they have done has been clumsy and stupid; nevertheless, so far, they haven’t made a single miscalculation. They have gambled on the stupidity of the masses with alarming accuracy. The Leader himself frankly stated that such gambles were the fundamental principle of his political actions: why shouldn’t they continue along these lines? With dreadful single-mindedness of purpose they continued the lies that General Headquarters had to drop at the end of the war. And the peasants and small tradespeople believed every lie they uttered. Why shouldn’t they have been taken in by those lies? The principle of those fellows was really appallingly simple: let your yes mean no and let your no mean yes.”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“But their confidence had vanished, they brooded in heavy-hearted distress; for what they had to face, they felt it in their bones, was neither the attack of a single enemy nor a single stroke of Fate. It was an earthquake, one of those great upheavals of concentrated, fathomless, worldwide stupidity. Pitted against such an elemental force, the strength and wisdom of the individual was useless.”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“The only thing one must not forget in spite of business is what sort of stuff these contemporaries of ours are made of. One makes use of them and washes one’s hands afterward. He knows that just as well as we do. He has made jokes about the Leader just like the rest of us. He used to go into fits of laughter when passages from his book were read. He’s a hearty laugher. And now, just think, Gustav, since the fellow has become chancellor, he takes him quite seriously. He has actually dared to maintain, in my presence, that the Leader is Somebody. At first I thought he was joking. But he stuck to it. He’s lied to himself so long and thoroughly about it, that now there’s nothing more to be done about it. The world has become a hideous place, Gustav.”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“That was the kind of thing that convinced people that what counted was not a judicial sentence but merely the Leader’s inspiration of the moment”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“Their Leader had saluted certain Nationalists, who had been found guilty of the brutal murder of a workman, as his comrades.”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“The fact is, the others inevitably persist in believing that no one could be taken in by such crudeness. And then, equally inevitably, everyone is taken in.”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“He sailed off again through the corridors. He must tell Gina he had invited little Jacoby to dinner and fix the exact time. Sister Helene would have to remind him. If possible, it had better be an evening when Ruth was free too. Why did he suddenly think about his daughter? Obviously in connection with little Jacoby. But why? Perhaps it was the earnestness, one really had to say, the frenzy, with which both pursued their aims. He, Edgar, smiled at Ruth’s Zionism. He ought to spend more time with her. Reason, reason, my daughter. Get thee not to a nunnery, Ophelia. It was a pity that the simplest things were the most difficult to understand. He was a German doctor, a German scientist. German medicine and Jewish medicine did not exist, the only thing that existed was science. He knew it, Jacoby knew it, old Lorenz knew it. But apparently Ruth did not know it, and certain others who mattered were still less aware of it. He thought with some uneasiness of the conference he was going to. In the end, little Jacoby would have to be sent to Palestine, he thought, smiling.”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“What do you mean by certain as the existence of the soul and the resurrection?” asked Mühlheim. “Do you mean a hundred percent certain or a hundred percent uncertain?”
― Cohen, The Oppermanns

“He could not understand how sick men, who had been given such diligent scientific attention, could, in spite of its obvious success, turn upon their doctors. The fact that these people, confronted on the one side by their own experience and on the other by a stupid persecution in the papers, decided against their experience and in favor of the persecution, staggered him.”
― Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns

“It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to neglect it.” For Tarfon, “the work” was the study of Torah, that is, the unfinishable task of trying to understand God’s word, which remains the task for the orthodox.”
― Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns