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Otto von Bismarck QUOTES

  • Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

  • People never lie so much as before an election, during a war, or after a hunt.

  • Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.

  • Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.



  • It is the destiny of the weak to be devoured by the strong.

  • One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (said in 1888).

  • Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.

  • The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

  • God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.

  • There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.

  • When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.

  • Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.

  • Politics is the art of the next best.

  • With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.


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