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

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.

Those who reject integration programs in the long term have as little right to stay in Germany as a hate preacher paid from abroad in a mosque.

However, I have a low opinion of people with narrow political horizons. Someone who talks about the environment and knows nothing about economics can make as many mistakes as someone who does the opposite.

The business of peace requires more than showing up with paint brushes, foodstuffs and an oil pipeline or two.

I discovered 'Rite of Spring' when I was 21. As a matter of fact, not with orchestra first, because it was still a work which was not often performed. Don't forget that I was 19 in 1944, still the Occupation time. So it was performed slightly after the end of the war, in 1945.

I think my biggest fear is having another global war which might have been a result of sharing the primary commodities in the world.

I am pro-peace.