Every state must be aware that its peace, its security rests on its own sword. - Otto von Bismarck

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.

One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (1888).

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.