Revolutions are only interludes in history. Marx called them the steam engines of history. We might rather call them the collisions of history: immen… - Arthur Moeller van den Bruck

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Revolutions are only interludes in history.
Marx called them the steam engines of history. We might rather call them the collisions of history: immense railway accidents which take their toll of sacrifice; which may be pregnant of consequences, but which have something of the banality of accidental catastrophes. [...]
At best catastrophes have the virtue of calling attention with a terrible emphasis to existing faults, to which custom and stupidity and self-sufficiency have blinded us. The necessary salvage work after a revolution must, however, be handed over to some experienced person conversant with the whole administration who can set the wrecked, overturned engine in motion again. Life of its own weight resumes its equilibrium, and the conservative principle on which all life is based is vindicated.

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About Arthur Moeller van den Bruck

Arthur Wilhelm Ernst Victor Moeller van den Bruck (23 April 1876 – 30 May 1925) was a German cultural historian, philosopher, reactionary, and writer best known for his controversial 1923 book Das Dritte Reich ("The Third Reich"), which promoted German nationalism and strongly influenced the Conservative Revolutionary movement and then the Nazi Party, despite his open opposition and numerous criticisms of theirs.

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Alternative Names: Arthur Wilhelm Ernst Victor Moeller van den Bruck
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Additional quotes by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck

Who is the liberal chameleon: democracy?
Who is this Moloch who devours the masses and the classes and the trades and the professions and all human distinctions?
Who is this Leviathan? We must not let either the rhetoric or the bonhomie of the democrat deceive us about the true nature of the monster.

The population problem is THE problem of Germany: a socialist problem if you will, but more exactly a German problem. Since access to the outer world is forbidden us we must look for its solution within our own borders; and since it cannot there be solved, a day must come when we shall burst our frontiers and seek and find it outside. [...]<p>The victors have no population problems. Their countries give a home to all who speak their tongue. In addition they possess other lands to which their people may migrate. They have divided up the globe between them. Since the word 'annexation' has acquired an ugly ring, and 'sphere of influence' is no less suspect, they have invented the idea of the mandate and conferred it on themselves through the League of Nations. They have now not enough people to take possession of these countries and administer them to full advantage, or to bring them up to that level of progress which they consider it their peculiar privilege to promote. The population problem of the victors is that of declining populations.

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The Revolution can never be un-made.
A revolution may be combated while there is yet time while there is yet faith that help may be found for the nation in its need. Such help will most readily be found in the government which has hitherto been the nation's best protector. But once a revolution has become a fact, there is nothing left for the thinking man but to accept it as a new datum, a new starting-point.

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