I went the round of the villages and found the peasants already eager to march to the help of the King in Berlin. Especially enthusiastic was an old … - Otto von Bismarck

In looking back upon this situation, we have lamentable proof of the degree of dishonesty and cosmopolitanism to which political parties with us attained when actuated by party hatred. Something similar may have happened elsewhere; but I know of no other country where
the universal national feeling and love for the whole Fatherland offered so little resistance to the excesses of party passion as with us.

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.

I ask you what right had I to close the way to the throne against these people? The kings of Prussia have never been by preference kings of the rich. Frederick the Great said when Crown Prince: “Quand je serai roi, je serai un vrai roi des gueux.” He undertook to be the protector of the poor, and this principle has been followed by our later kings. At their throne suffering has always found a refuge and a hearing. ... Our kings have secured the emancipation of the serfs, they have created a thriving peasantry, and they may possibly be successful—the earnest endeavour exists, at any rate—in improving the condition of the working classes somewhat. To have refused access to the throne to the complaints of these operatives would not have been the right course to pursue, and it was, moreover, not my business to do it. The question would afterwards have been asked: “How rich must a deputation be in order to its reception by the King?”