Otto von Bismarck Quotes

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

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood

"Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!"
-after the split between Anarchists and Marxists in 1872

Hounds follow those who feed them.

Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful.

the main thing is to make history not to write it

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

The statesman's task is to hear God's footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to His coattails as He marches past.

الحياة أشبه بالتواجد عند طبيب الأسنان. فأنت تعتقد دائما أن الأسوأ هو الذي لا يزال في طريقه إليك، رغم أنه يكون قد انتهى بالفعل.

We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.

Politics ruins the character

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.

Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.

Not by speeches and votes of the majority, are the great questions of the time decided — that was the error of 1848 and 1849 — but by iron and blood.

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