Bismarck Quotes

• In the early days of his reign, Bismarck confided to a friend that it would some day be necessary for Germany to confine William II in an insane asylum.

  Kelly Miller

  Insane, Germany, Asylums

  Kelly Miller (1919). “Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights”

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• Like Prince von Bismarck in diplomacy, I have no secrets.

  Albert J. Nock

  Secret, Diplomacy

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• Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  War, Fighting, Century

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• Bismarck's genius, as well as his great flaw, was the same as that of another outstanding nineteenth-century politician of the German-speaking world, Prince Clemens Metternich. Both men were artificers, able to hold off the future by building a fragile present out of pieces of the past.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Past, Men, Genius

  Robert D. Kaplan (2014). “Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History”, p.54, Picador

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• Bismarck was a large persian cat owned by Florence Nightingale.

  Florence Nightingale

  Cat, Florence Nightingale, Persian

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• Britain's success in the exploitation of non-European races raised the ambition of Bismarck and later Mussolini and others.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Ambition, Race, Britain

  Source: gandhiking.ning.com

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• Does not all the world know that when in autumn the Bismarcks of the world, or they who are bigger than Bismarcks, meet at this or that delicious haunt of salubrity, the affairs of the world are then settled in little conclaves, with grater ease, rapidity, and certainty than in large parliaments or the dull chambers of public offices?

  Anthony Trollope

  Autumn, Office, Doe

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume): Can You Forgive Her? + Phineas Finn + The Eustace Diamonds + Phineas Redux + The Prime Minister + The Duke’s Children”, p.2289, e-artnow

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• On the other hand, heroism is basic to the character of the Nordic peoples. This heroism of the ancient mythic period and this is what is decisive has never been lost, despite times of decline, so long as the Nordic blood was still alive. Heroism, in fact, took many forms, from the warrior nobility of Siegfried or Hercules to the intellectual nobility of Copernicus and Leonardo , the religious nobility of Eckehart and Lagarde, or the political nobility of Frederick the Great and Bismarck , and its substance has remained the same.

  Alfred Rosenberg

  Religious, Character, Warrior

  "The Myth of the Twentieth Century". Book by Alfred Rosenberg, 1930.

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• If you study Japanese art you see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw every plant and then the seasons, the wide aspects of the countryside, then animals, then the human figure. So he passes his life, and life is too short to do the whole.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Wise, Art, Distance

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• Bismarck had cunningly taught the parties not to aim at national appeal but to represent interests. They remained class or sectional pressure-groups under the Republic. This was fatal, for it made the party system, and with it democratic parliamentarianism, seem a divisive rather than a unifying factor. Worse: it meant the parties never produced a leader who appealed beyond the narrow limits of his own following.

  Paul Johnson

  Party, Class, Pressure Groups

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• Eden ha[s] put his country in a position where she sustained the greatest diplomatic reverse since Bismarck in similar circumstances had called Palmerston's bluff in the matter of Schleswig-Holstein...Further damage was done when Russia proved by her action in Spain, that she was not a good European as Mr. Eden had assured the world was the case.

  Anthony Eden

  Country, Russia, Eden

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• Do you know out of what the German Empire arose? Out of dreams, songs, fantasies and black-red-gold ribbons? Bismarck merely shook the tree that fantasies had planted.

  Theodor Herzl

  Dream, Song, Tree

  Quoted in Carl E Schorske Fin-de-Sie'cle Vienna (1961), p.165.

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