Great Throughts Treasury

"Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal... A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all... I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where... Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off."

"God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America."

"Government is cancerous in head and limbs; only its belly is sound, and the laws it excretes are the most straightforward shit in the world."

"Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic."

"Hit the Poles so hard that they despair of their life; I have full sympathy with their condition, but if we want to survive, we can only exterminate them; the wolf, too, cannot help having been created by God as he is, but people shoot him for it if they can."

"Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience."

"I am accustomed to pay men back in their own coin."

"He who has his thumb on the purse has the power."

"I have a burden on my soul. During my long life, I did not make anyone happy, neither my friends, nor my family, nor even myself. I have done many evil things...I was the cause of the beginning of three big wars. About 800,000 people were killed because of me on the battlefields., and their mothers, brothers, and widows cried for them. And now this stands between me and God."

"I have never lived on principles. When I have had to act, I never first asked myself on what principles I was going to act, but I went at it and did what I thought fit. I have often reproached myself for my want of principle."

"I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring."

"It is said that only a fool learns from his own mistakes, a wise man from the mistakes of others."

"If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans."

"Let us lift Germany, so to speak, into the saddle. Surely when that is achieved, it will succeed at riding as well."

"Not by speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the time decided... but by iron and blood."

"Life is like a presence at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still on its way to you, even though it is already over."

"It is not by speeches and majority vote that the great questions of our time will be decided ? as that was error of 1848 and 1849 ? but rather by iron and blood."

"Let them stew in their own grease (or juice)."

"No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing."

"Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others."

"Otto von Bismarck: The Germans have just bought a new country in Africa where Jews and pigs will be tolerated."

"One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans."

"People never lie so much as before an election, during a war, or after a hunt."

"The great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and the resolutions of majorities ? that was the great mistake from 1848 to 1849 ? but by blood and iron."

"The king reigns but does not govern."

"Politics ruins the character"

"The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night"

"The luxury of one's own opinion."

"The advertisement still has to be creative. Additionally, the consumer wants to see the celebrity 'on the job', i.e. in a known role or stereotype,"

"There is only one greater folly than that of the fool who says in his heart there is no God, and that is the folly of the people that says with its head that it does not know whether there is a God or not"

"They treat me like a fox, a cunning fellow (Schlaukopf) of the first rank. But the truth is that with a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and when I have to do with a pirate, I try to be a pirate and a half."

"The main thing is to make history, not to write it."

"The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia."

"To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making."

"With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and when I have to do with a pirate, I try to be a pirate and a half."

"We Germans fear God and nothing else on earth; and it is the fear of God, and nothing else, that makes us love and cherish peace."

"Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: it is a geographical expression."

"When asked what was the greatest political fact of modern times, Bismarck is reported to have responded, that it was " the inherited and permanent fact that North America speaks English."

"Your map of Africa is really quite nice. But my map of Africa lies in Europe. Here is Russia, and here... is France, and we're in the middle ? that's my map of Africa."