'Germans are obsessed with paying taxes - they are affronted by any state with little or not taxation - such as the British Virgin Islands'

'No matter how grim the outlook or how politicians squabble over what to do, Germans stick to their idealistic concept of Europe'

‘Do we still have an intellectual elite that reads, and writers to cater for it? In Germany, we have Merkur’

‘Europe’s intellectuals should get on with the job of helping to lift the continent out of its apparently endless crisis’