Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best. - Otto von Bismarck

Politics is the art of the possible.

The interests of the state alone have guided me, and it has been a calumny when publicists, even well-meaning, have accused me of having ever advocated an aristocratic system. I have never regarded birth as a substitute for want of ability; whenever I have come forward on behalf of landed property, it has not been in the interests of proprietors of my own class, but because I see in the decline of agriculture one of the greatest dangers to our permanence as a state. The ideal that has always floated before me has been a monarchy which should be so far controlled by an independent national representation—according to my notion, representing classes or callings—that monarch or parliament would not be able to alter the existing statutory position before the law separately but only communi consensu; with publicity, and public criticism, by press and Diet, of all political proceedings.

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.

Faust complains of having two souls in his breast. I have a whole squabbling crowd. It goes on as in a republic.