[N]icht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschiedenen [...] sondern durch Eisen und Blut. - Otto von Bismarck

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.

The life of a man is like a game of chess, which he plays according to his art.

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.