Quotes by Otto Bismarck

• 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.
• Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: it is a geographical expression.
• When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.
• 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.
• When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
• To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.
• There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.
• The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.
• The main thing is to make history, not to write it.
• A journalist is a person who has mistaken their calling.
• Politics is the art of the possible.
• Politics is not an exact science.
• People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.
• Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
• Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
• I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring.
• Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.
• Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.
• An appeal to fear never finds an echo in German hearts.
• All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence.
• A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.
• Politics ruins the character.
• A statesman... must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.