Quotes from Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer

You don't restore people's faith in law and order with shrill tones, but with real policies.

To those who cynically say today that liberal democracy would be 'obsolete,' I reply: liberal democracy, human rights, freedom of the press and the rule of law were the right way, are the right way, and will be the right way.

There are high hurdles for expelling someone from a party, and with good reason.

There are similarities with Angela Merkel, there are issues that separate us, and I'm showing that genuinely and authentically and won't create an artificial separation because it has something to do with character and attitude.

I believe that we must attach greater importance to the issue of industrial policy in Europe.

I am convinced that we need a stronger Europe that acts in a common agreement on the most crucial issues. For me these are safety, defense, innovation and the aim to maintain our well being.

European centralism, European statism, the communitization of sovereign debt, a Europeanization of social systems and of the minimum wage would be the wrong way.

When Presidents Trump, Putin and Erdogan are mentioned in the same breath here in Germany, as they are all too often, this is a false equivalence that cannot be tolerated.

I have read a lot about what I am and who I am: 'mini,' a copy, simply 'more of the same.' Dear delegates, I stand before you as I am and as life made me and I am proud of that.

But I stand here as my own person, as a mother of three, as a former interior minister, state leader, who has served this land for 18 years and who has learned what it means to lead. And that leadership has more to do with inner strength than how loud you talk.

We made a clear commitment to NATO's two percent goal. I know that we can't get there from one day to the next, but I'm just as clear on the fact that we must get there in the end.

For a long time, perhaps too long, we believed that the world around us would become more and more peaceful, and the order more stable.

My goal is to unite the party, to bring it together.

Brexit has been a strain on all of us. In some ways it has paralysed us.

We need strategic strength for our industry, technology and innovation, a sense of security for our European citizens and common foreign and security capabilities to defend our interests.

Europe cannot be only the receiver of strategic decisions of others, that is China or the U.S.A. We have to be strong ourselves to shape the global rules.

Being a people's party cannot mean being a kind of all-purpose political shop that offers something for everyone.

Freedom of opinion is a valuable asset in a democracy.

The CDU was a party that united different denominational and ideological currents. If the idea of a rightward shift means that we ignore those roots and only define ourselves as a conservative party, then I am strictly opposed.

It should be clear to everyone what happens when the populists can set the agenda.

I think people see me as authentic, just like I am, with my ideas, my style of doing politics.

The CDU is a party with more than 400,000 members. The fact that each one has a different opinion is what makes us interesting.

There will certainly be times when Merkel and I will have opposing viewpoints. Just the fact that government work adheres to a different set of prerogatives than a party does makes conflicts unavoidable.

When it comes to social issues such as the role of the family, I'm certainly more conservative than Angela Merkel. But on the big questions on what direction and where Germany should develop, when it comes to the economy, then we have very similar views.