My office has a view of low-cost housing, old East German prefabricated apartment buildings. It isn't an attractive view, but it's very helpful, because it reminds me to ask myself, whenever there is a decision to be made, whether the people who live there can afford our decisions.

Besides Germany, the only countries that don't have speed limits are places like Nepal, where road conditions are so bad that a limit would be beside the point. In other words, it's a little crazy that this is even a topic for debate in Germany.

Real life is happening outside and not in front of a computer.

In the business of politics, emotions and productive dissatisfaction with the world in which we live today are gradually being covered up by the minutiae of ordinary life.

When you think back today to a time more than 70 years ago when Germany was a terrible place, a place people were afraid of, it is a wonderful development that we have gone from being a terrible place to a place that people dream of.

Taming the financial markets and winning back democratic control over them is the central condition for creating a new social balance in Germany and Europe.

The idea that the growing demand for energy worldwide can be met with energy from nuclear power is nonsense.