Oswald Spengler Quotes

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• Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.

  Oswald Spengler

  Freedom, Thinking, People

  135 Copy quote

• We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.

  Oswald Spengler

  Taken, Mean, Greatness

  Oswald Spengler (2016). “Routledge Revivals: Man and Technics (1932): A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life”, p.56, Routledge

  141 Copy quote

• When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard 'having children' as a question of pro's and con's, the great turning point has come.

  Oswald Spengler

  Children, People, Ordinary

  Oswald Spengler, Charles Francis Atkinson (1950). “Perspectives of world history”

  122 Copy quote

• Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect.

  Oswald Spengler

  Democracy, Intellect, Destroyers

  Oswald Spengler (1991). “The Decline of the West”, p.396, Oxford University Press, USA

  105 Copy quote

• Pacifism means letting the non-pacifists have control ... Pacifism will remain an ideal, war a fact. If the white races are resolved never to wage war again, the colored will act differently and become rulers of the world.

  Oswald Spengler

  War, Mean, Race

  120 Copy quote

• The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play.

  Oswald Spengler

  Army, Play, Soldier

  95 Copy quote

• Fortunately, at the last hour, there were always a few soldiers to save Civilization.

  Oswald Spengler

  Civilization, Soldier, Lasts

  98 Copy quote

• We have not chosen this time. We cannot help it if we are born as men of the early winter of full Civilization, instead of on the golden summit of a ripe Culture, in a Phidias or a Mozart time. Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our destiny, clearly, on our realizing that though we may lie to ourselves about it, we cannot evade it. He who does not acknowledge this in his heart, ceases to be counted among the men of his generation, and remains either a simpleton, a charlatan, or a pedant.

  Oswald Spengler

  Lying, Heart, Winter

  Oswald Spengler (1961). “Form and actuality”

  103 Copy quote

• What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears.

  Oswald Spengler

  Multitudes

  Oswald Spengler (1991). “The Decline of the West”, p.394, Oxford University Press, USA

  81 Copy quote

• To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed.

  Oswald Spengler

  Drama, Views, Media

  "The Decline of the West (Volume II)". Book by Oswald Spengler, 1928.

  67 Copy quote

• Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

  Oswald Spengler

  Eugenics, Class, Socialism

  Jahre der Entscheidung (The Hour of Decision, 1933) pt. 1

  94 Copy quote

• Talk of world peace is heard today only among the white peoples, and not among the much more numerous coloured races. This is a perilous state of affairs. When individual thinkers and idealists talk of peace, as they have done since time immemorial, the effect is negligible. But when whole peoples become pacifistic it is a symptom of senility. Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. To adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence. As long as man continues to evolve, there will be wars.

  Oswald Spengler

  Strong, War, Men

  94 Copy quote

• The question of whether world peace will ever be possible can only be answered by someone familiar with world history. To be familiar with world history means, however, to know human beings as they have been and always will be. There is a vast difference, which most people will never comprehend, between viewing future history as it will be and viewing it as one might like it to be. Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals.

  Oswald Spengler

  War, Mean, Differences

  100 Copy quote

• Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals.

  Oswald Spengler

  War, Desire, Facts

  77 Copy quote

• Optimism is cowardice.

  Oswald Spengler

  Optimism, Cowardice

  Oswald Spengler (2016). “Routledge Revivals: Man and Technics (1932): A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life”, p.56, Routledge

  79 Copy quote

• At last, in the gray dawn of Civilization the fire in the Soul dies down. The dwindling powers rise to one more, half-successful, effort of creation, and produce the Classicism that is common to all dying Cultures. The soul thinks once again, and in Romanticism looks back piteously to its childhood; then finally, weary, reluctant, cold, it loses its desire to be, and, as in Imperial Rome, wishes itself out of the overlong daylight and back in the darkness of protomysticism in the womb of the mother in the grave.

  Oswald Spengler

  Mother, Successful, Thinking

  Oswald Spengler (1991). “The Decline of the West”, p.75, Oxford University Press, USA

  79 Copy quote

• Every action alters the soul of the doer.

  Oswald Spengler

  Spiritual, Soul, Doers

  23 Copy quote

• It doesn't really matter what one writes into a constitution. The important thing is what the collective instinct eventually makes of it.

  Oswald Spengler

  Writing, Important, Matter

  44 Copy quote

• The common man wants nothing of life but health, longevity, amusement, comfort-“happiness.” He who does not despise this should turn his eyes from world history, for it contains nothing of the sort. The best that history has created is great suffering.

  Oswald Spengler

  Eye, Men, Suffering

  Oswald Spengler (1967). “Aphorisms”

  66 Copy quote

• There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.

  Oswald Spengler

  Leader, Movement, Facts

  Oswald Spengler (1991). “The Decline of the West”, p.367, Oxford University Press, USA

  58 Copy quote

• Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.

  Oswald Spengler

  Christian, Grandmother, Theology

  Oswald Spengler (1942). “Hour Decision”

  27 Copy quote

• You are caught in the current of unceasing change. Your life is a ripple in it. Every moment of your conscious life links the infinite past with the infinite future. Take part in both and you will not find the present empty.

  Oswald Spengler

  Past, Links, Life Is

  Oswald Spengler (1967). “Aphorisms”

  39 Copy quote

• This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on. This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.

  Oswald Spengler

  Meaningful, Purpose, May

  Oswald Spengler (1967). “Aphorisms”

  83 Copy quote

• Every Socialist outbreak only blazes new paths for Capitalism.

  Oswald Spengler

  Path, Outbreaks, Socialist

  Oswald Spengler (1991). “The Decline of the West”, p.390, Oxford University Press, USA

  31 Copy quote

• We Germans will never produce another Goethe, but we may produce another Caesar.

  Oswald Spengler

  Germany, May, Produce

  18 Copy quote

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