Bismarck: A Chronology

A collection of Bismarck’s most memorable quotes and observations on politics, statecraft and human nature.

“It is a most fascinating pastime to follow a great man’s thoughts.” - Pushkin

“Vergebens, dass ihr ringsum wissenschaftlich schweift Ein jeder lernt nur, was er lernen kann, Doch der den Augenblick ergreift, Das ist der rechte Mann.” - Faust, Goethe

“Genius is knowing when to stop.” - Goethe

“We cannot for one moment doubt that he was a born revolutionary. For revolutionaries are born just as legitimists are born, with a particular cast of mind, whereas chance alone determines whether the circumstances of his life make of the same person a White or a Red.” - Monsieur de Bismarck, Ludwig Bamberger, 1868

“He goeth furthest who knows not whither he is going.” - Cromwell

“Unda fert nec regitur” - A favourite Bismarck phrase meaning: you can ride a wave but not make one

“Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.” - A favourite Bismarck phrase meaning: If I can’t bend the will of Heaven, I’ll raise Hell

“No one would ever have heard of me in my rural retreat, if I had not become a member of the united diet by chance.” - 1881

“In dealing with the Bismarcks, especially on personal matters, it is necessary to be extremely careful. To get rid of a rival, they will do things of which it would be absurd to suspect any other statesman in Europe… One misses the extraordinary penetration of the old man…” - Lord Salisbury on Bismarck

“While Bismarck spoke, his soft gentle voice struck me and those unforgettable eyes … teary but remarkably beautiful from which sudden bolts of lightning would flash… On the way home I asked my father about that remarkable, gentle voice. He said to me with a laugh, ‘In those gentle tones he read the death sentence for many careers and twisted the neck of many a diplomat who had provoked his hate.’” - 1895 Prince Hohenlohe took his son to visit

“I would not be in your shoes. You seem to me at times to be like a rider who juggles on horseback with five balls, never letting one fall.” - Wilhelm I to Bismarck

“I have the unfortunate nature that everywhere I could be seems desirable to me, and dreary and boring as soon as I am there.”

“The best words in the Bible are: Oh Lord, Thou hast broken the teeth of the wicked.”

“There is no such thing as an evil race.”

“[Of Berlin] I’m like the Indian whose hunting ground has been appropriated by the white man… I just don’t like the stink of civilisation in the big cities.”

“I’ve given up listening to music, the melodies stay with me, they bring tears to my eyes, they exhaust me.”

“Man can neither create nor direct the stream of time. He can only travel upon it and steer with more or less skill and experience. He can suffer shipwreck and go aground and also arrive at safe harbours.” (Cf. Pflanze (OP) p3 for references to similar remarks)

“The sessions of every kind are the more exhausting because the first word tells you what the whole speech will contain, like certain bad novels, but you cannot leave because of the possibility of votes.” 1849.

“The bureaucracy is cancerous from head to foot; only its belly is sound and the laws it excretes are the most straightforward shit in the world… With this bureaucracy including the judges on the bench we can have press laws written by angels and they cannot lift us from the swamp. With bad laws and good civil servants one can still govern, with bad civil servants the best laws cannot help.” Letter, 30 June 1850.

“Nobody, not the most malignant doubter of a democrat, can believe the amount of charlatanism and self-importance there is in this diplomatic game… Those from the small states are caricatures of pig-tailed diplomacy, who immediately put on their ‘official report’ face when I ask them for a light for my cigar.” Of life in Frankfurt.

“It is easy for a statesman … to use the people’s wind to give a blast on the war trumpet while warming his feet at his fireside or delivering rousing speeches from this platform, and to leave it up to the musketeer bleeding in the snow whether or not his system wins the day and reaps the glory. There is nothing easier, but woe betide the statesman who in this age fails to seek a reason for war that remains valid after the war is over.” 1850.

“In the middle of Europe it is impossible to wait passively upon the march of events or to try to stay removed from them… If we do not prepare for ourselves the role of the hammer, there will be nothing left but that of the anvil.” ?1851

“The stream of time flows inexorably along. By plunging my hand into it I am merely doing my duty. I do not expect thereby to change its course.” 1851 (OP), 5/2/52 (Clark)

“I did not marry you in order to have a society wife for others, but in order to love you in God and according to the requirements of my own heart, to have a place in this alien world no barren wind can cool, a place warmed by my own fireplace, to which I can draw near while it storms and freezes outside. And I want to tend my own fire and lay on wood, blow the flames, and protect it and shelter it against all that is evil and foreign.” To his wife, shortly after arriving in Frankfurt 14 May 1851. On another occasion, he similarly described his idea of home: “I was truly filled with gratitude to God, and there arose before my soul the quiet happiness of a family life filled with love, a peaceful haven [safe harbour] where, though a gust of wind perchance forces its way from the storms of the world-ocean and ruffles the surface, the warm depths remain clear and still.”

“I should be alarmed if we sought protection from the approaching storm by tying our neat seaworthy frigate to Austria’s worm-eaten old battleship. Great crises constitute the weather that favours Prussia’s growth, provided that it is fearlessly, perhaps even ruthlessly, exploited by us.” February 1854.

“Exalt his self-esteem toward foreigners and the Prussian forgets whatever bothers him about conditions at home.” 1858

“As God will, it is all merely a matter of time; nations and individuals, folly and wisdom, war and peace, they come and go like waves, and the sea remains. What are our states and their power and honour in God’s eyes but ant-hills or beehives that the hoof of the bullock tramples flat or fate overtakes in the person of the bee-keeper come to collect the honey.” July 1859

“I should overestimate the value of this life strangely if I did not constantly bear in mind that after thirty years, and possibly from a great deal earlier, it will be irrelevant to me what political successes I or my country have achieved in Europe. I can even think out the idea that some day ‘unbelieving Jesuits’ will rule together with a Bonapartist absolutism… From my twenty-third to my thirty-second year I lived in the country and I shall never get the longing to return there out of my veins. I am in politics only half-heartedly.” To Gerlach, May 1860.

“We lack a mere trifle at this stage and that is the brains of the ministry.” Roon, 18 May 1862.

“The Eastern question is an area in which we can help our friends and harm our enemies without being inhibited to any great extent by direct interests of our own.” November 1862

“Austria and Prussia are states which are too great to be bound by the text of a treaty. They can be guided only by their interests and their convenience. If any treaty should be in the way of these interests and convenience that treaty must be broken.” To Thun, 1863.

“Looked at individually these people [parliamentary representatives] are in part very shrewd, mostly educated, regular German university culture … as soon as they assemble in corpore, they are dumb in the mass, though individually intelligent.” April 1863, to Motley.

“I am prepared for war and revolution combined. Nor am I the slightest bit afraid of war; on the contrary, I am also indifferent to revolutionary or conservative, as I am to all mere words.”

“The individual actions were trifles in themselves; to see that they connected was the difficulty.” Re the immense complexities and his tangled web over Schleswig-Holstein.

“This trade teaches that one can be as shrewd as the shrewdest in this world and still at any moment go like a child into the dark” (to his wife,1864, Pflanze translation). “In this business you get to learn that you can grow as wise as the wisest, yet the next minute grope about in the dark like a child.” (Ritter).

“Anyone who calls me an unscrupulous politician is doing me an injustice and should start by trying his own conscience in this particular arena… When I stake my life on a thing, I do so in the faith that I have fortified for myself, in long and bitter struggle but also in sincere and humble prayer to God, and that no word of man, not even that of a friend in the Lord and a servant of his Church, is going to overthrow for me… As a statesman I am not ruthless enough but rather cowardly in my feelings, and this is so because in the questions that confront me it is not always easy to gain the clarity that engenders faith in God.” 26 December 1865.

“Austria was no more in the wrong in opposing our claims than we were in making them.” Post-Sadowa to Wilhelm.

“Beating the Austrians was no art. I knew that they were not militarily prepared and I could count on the Prussian army. The difficulty was getting my king to take the plunge [… across the trench]”

“I also hold it probable that violent events would further German unity. To assume the mission of bringing about a violent catastrophe and take responsibility for the timing of it, however, is quite another matter. Arbitrary interference in the course of history, motivated on purely subjective grounds, has never achieved any other result than to shake down unripe fruit. That German unity is not now a ripe fruit is in my opinion obvious… We can put the clocks forward, but time does not thereby move any faster, and the ability to wait while the situation develops is a prerequisite of practical politics… We can look forward to the future with repose and leave to our successors what remains to be done.” February 1869.

“In Europe’s present situation, in the present state of civilisation, it is impossible to undertake great political and perhaps warlike actions for secret reasons of cabinet diplomacy that may be unravelled later by historians. Now one can only conduct war out of national motives, from motives that are national to the degree that their compelling nature is recognised by the great majority of the population.” 22 April 1869, to Reichstag.

“At least I am not so arrogant as to assume that the likes of us are able to make history. My task is to keep an eye on the currents and steer my ship in them as best I can. The currents themselves I cannot direct, even less am I able to create them.” July 1869.

“This self denial, this self-sacrifice on behalf of duty to State and King is, among us, a vestige of the faith of our fathers and grandfathers, a faith that has been transformed, so that it is obscure and nevertheless effective, no longer a faith and yet a faith after all… If I were no longer a Christian I would not serve the King another hour… Sever my connection with God and I would pack up tomorrow and be off… If there is no Divine commandment, why should I subordinate myself to these Hohenzollerns? They are a Swabian family, no better than my own, and in that case no concern of mine.” September 1870.

“Sitting in the saddle the King hardly realises that I am a good horse that he has ridden to pieces; the lazy ones hold up better.” December 1872 to Roon.

“To be a minister too long and to be successful with God’s help is to feel distinctly the cold tide of disfavour and hate rising higher and higher right up to the heart. One gains no new friends, the old ones die, or back off in disaffection. Furthermore, the cold descends from above — that is the natural history of all rulers, even the best. Yet every favourable inclination requires reciprocity if it is to last. In short, I am freezing emotionally, and I long for your company and to be with you in the solitude of the country.” 12/1870.

Autumn 1870 while starving Paris into surrender: “Where there are so many people close together, individual qualities can easily cease to exist, they intermix. All sorts of opinions arise out of the air, out of hearsay and repetition, opinions which have little or no foundation in fact. But they are spread through newspapers, public meetings, conversations over a glass of beer, and then they become fixed, indestructible… That is the case in all big cities.” - 1875

“Historians never saw anything except through their own spectacles. Why I prize Carlyle so highly is that he understands how to get inside another’s soul… For me it is especially burdensome that my personal opponents increase with every passing year. My calling demands of me that I tread on the toes of a lot of people and no one ever forgets that. I am too old to win new friends. I also have no time for them. And the old friends disappear from view as soon as they believe I will no longer do anything for them. So eventually I will be surrounded only by personal enemies.” - 1875

“I have always found the word Europe on the lips of those statesmen who want something which they dare not ask for in their own names.” - 1878

“Politics is long-lived and requires plans whose fulfilment will take generations.” - May 1878

“In an emergency one cannot be hypersensitive about methods — à corsaire, corsaire et demi.” - 1878

“A gentilhomme, gentilhomme — à corsaire, corsaire et demi.”

“The trouble about politics is that you can never be certain when your policy has been correct. Perhaps our policy after 1866 was in fact mistaken. The Federal Diet had greater means of checking revolutionary movements and tendencies to disaffection in individual states that the modern Reich with its Federal Council and its Reichstag.” - 1881

“I have always found that the hardest tasks of diplomacy lie in relations with one’s own court.” - 1888

“State socialism is on the move and there is no stopping it. Whoever embraces this idea will come to power.”

“If I have to eat with members of parliament, I must drink myself the courage.”

“I have never judged international disputes by the standards which prevail at a student duel.”

“One’s enemies one can deal with but one’s friends! They all wear blinkers and only see a patch of the world.”

“We shall need the national swindle later as protection against French demands.” - WHEN?

“In verbis simus faciles” regarding reconciliation with the Liberals and to Roon and Memoirs 2.79.

“In verbis simus faciles, it does not matter whether our navy is called Prussian, German or North German.”

“Alliances between large states are of value only when they express the actual interests of both parties.”

“Attendance fees mean paying the educated proletariat for the professional practice of demagogy.”

“The statesman is like a wayfarer in the forest who knows in which direction he is walking but not at what point he will emerge from the trees. Just like him the statesman must take the negotiable paths if he is not to lose his way.” To Friedjung, June 1890.

“One clings to principles only for so long as they are not put to the test. When that happens one throws them away as the peasant does his slippers and walks after the fashion that nature intended.” 1847

“Going through life with principles is like walking through a thick forest with a long pole held between one’s teeth.”

In retirement, April 1895, he was asked about ‘principles’ and scoffed that the question was like old Rothschild saying to his accountant, “Mr Meier, if you please, what are my principles today with regard to American hides.”

“Politics is a job that can really only be compared with navigation in uncharted waters. One has no idea how the weather or the currents will be or what storms one is in for. In politics, there is the added fact that one is largely dependent on the decisions of others, decisions on which one was counting and which then do not materialise; one’s actions are never completely one’s own. And if the friends on whose support one is relying change their minds, which is something that one cannot vouch for, the whole plan miscarries… One’s enemies one can count on - but one’s friends!… Politics is not in itself an exact and logical science but it is the capacity to choose in each fleeting moment of the situation that which is least harmful or most opportune.” Bismarck, 1895.

“For me history existed primarily to be learned from. Even if the events do not repeat themselves, at least circumstances and characters do. By observing and studying them one can stimulate and educate one’s mind. I have learned from the mistakes of my predecessors in the art of statesmanship and have built up my ‘theory’, although one ought not to speak of such in the narrow sense of the word.” (Napoleon I taught him ‘wise moderation after the greatest successes’, Napoleon III not to confuse ‘slyness with falsehood’.)

“More than anything else politics demands the capacity to recognise intuitively in each new situation where the correct path lies. The statesman must see things coming ahead of time and be prepared for them… He must be able to wait until the right moment has come and precipitate nothing, no matter how great the temptation… From childhood I have been a hunter and fisher. In both cases waiting for the right moment has been the rule that I have applied to politics. I have often had to stand for long periods in the hunting blind and let myself be covered and stung by insects before the moment came to shoot… Correct evaluation of the opponent is also indispensable to success. This means the exercise of caution. In chess one should never base a move on the positive assumption that the other player will in turn make a certain move. For it may be that this won’t happen and then the game is easily lost. One must always reckon with the possibility that the opponent will at the last moment make a move other than that expected and act accordingly. In other words, one must always have two irons in the fire… Many paths led to my goal. I had to try all of them one after the other, the most dangerous at the end. It was not my way to be single-handed in political action…”

“You cannot play chess when sixteen of the sixty-four squares are forbidden to you by your own side.”

“Short-sighted and long-sighted eyes both give incorrect vision but for a practical statesman I regard the latter failing as the more dangerous because it makes him miss the things that are right in front of him.” 21 July, 1869 (letter to Lucius).

“I never advance a foot until certain that the ground to be trod is firm and safe.” To Wagener.

“When I lie awake at night I am often visited by memories of injustices yet unatoned for that befell me thirty years ago. I grow literally hot at the thought and in my drowsy state I dream of the necessary countermeasures.” To Lucius, 1876

“Goethe has been almost always loved, seldom hated.Yet hate is as great a spur to life as love. Two things preserve and embellish my life — my wife and Windthorst. The one is there for love, the other for hate.” P241, OP vol2.

“But as soon as a man can protect himself before his own conscience and his group, by the plea that he is acting in the interest of his party, the meanest action is considered permissible and even excusable.”

“It was impossible during the animated and sometimes stormy development of our politics always to foresee with certainty whether the road which I took was the right one, and yet I was obliged to act as though I could predict with absolute clearness both coming events and the effect which my decisions would have upon them… It is just as impossible to foresee with any certainty the political results at the time when a measure has to be carried, as it would be in our climate to predict the weather of the next few days. Yet we have to make decisions as though we can do so, often enough fighting against all the influences to which we are accustomed to attach weight… The consideration of the question whether a decision is right, and whether it is right to hold fast and carry through what, though upon a weak premise, has been recognised as right, has an agitating effect on every conscientious and honourable man. This is strengthened by the circumstance that often many years must elapse before we are able in political matters to convince ourselves whether our wishes and actions were right or wrong. It is not the work which is wearing, but rather the doubts and anxieties; the feeling of honour and responsibility, without being able to support the latter by anything except our own convictions and our own will, and this is more especially the case in the most important crises.”

“Politics is always like visiting a country one does not know with people whom one does not know and whose reactions one cannot predict. When one person puts a hand in his pocket, the other person is already drawing his gun, and when he pulls the trigger the first one fires and it is too late then to ask whether the requirements of common law with regard to self-defence apply, and since common law is not effective in politics people are very, very quick to adopt an aggressive defence.” July 1879 to Reichstag.

“My entire life was spent gambling for high stakes with other people’s money. I could never foresee exactly whether my plan would succeed… Politics is a thankless job because everything depends on chance and conjecture. One has to reckon with a series of probabilities and improbabilities and base one’s plans upon this reckoning… As long as he lives the statesman is always unprepared. In the attainment of that for which he strives he is too dependent on the participation of others, a fluctuating and incalculable factor… [One] has to expect random disturbances like the farmer does with weather conditions. Even after the greatest success he cannot say with certainty, ‘Now it is achieved; I am done with it,’ and look back at what has been accomplished with complacency… One can bring individual matters to a conclusion, but even then there is no way of knowing what the consequences will be… In politics there is no such thing as complete certainty and definitive results… Everything goes continually uphill, downhill.” (GW, IX, 397ff)

“There is no exact science of politics just as there is none for political economy. Only professors are able to package the sum of the changing needs of cultural man into scientific laws… The professors and their imitators in the newspapers constantly decry the fact that I have not revealed a set of principles by which I directed my policies. Because they have as yet scarcely outgrown the political nursery, the Germans cannot accustom themselves to regard political affairs as a study of the possible… Politics is neither arithmetic nor mathematics. To be sure, one has to reckon with given and unknown factors, but there are no rules and formulas with which to sum up the results in advance.”

“History with its great events does not roll on like a railway train at an even speed. No, it advances by fits and starts but with an irresistible force when it does. One must just be permanently on the look-out and, when one sees God striding through history, leap in and catch hold of his coat-tail and be dragged along as far as may be. It is dishonest fully and outmoded political wisdom to pretend that it is a question of weaving opportunities and stirring up troubled waters in order then to go fishing in them.” (‘In conversation as an old man’, Gall)

“I do not borrow the standard of my conduct towards foreign governments from stagnating antipathies, but only from the harm or good that I judge them capable of doing to Prussia.” Vol. 1, p. 173.

“[I]n politics I do not believe it possible to follow principle in such a way that its most extreme implications always take precedence over every other consideration.” To Gerlach

“I recognize no kind of principled commitment for the policy of a Prussian. I regard policy solely by the measure of its usefulness for Prussian goals. In my view, the duty of a Prussian monarchy is limited to the borders of the Prussian empire drawn by God.” GW3

“I take great care in all my official tasks to see them with the greatest possible objectivity and correctness.” GW3

“[The statesman] must always be directed by the prevailing circumstances at the time; he cannot command the facts before him and the currents of the time, but rather cleverly use them for his purposes. He must observe or seek out every favorable opportunity to implement what seems to him correct and appropriate… A governing program that applies to all times cannot exist because the times change.” GW9

“They want to urge me into war and I want peace. It would be frivolous to start a new war; we are not a pirate state which makes war because it suits a few.” 1887

To Sir Charles Dilke post-retirement: “Were it all to come over again, I would be republican and democrat; the rule of kings is the rule of women; the bad women are bad and the good are worse… Cavour, Crispi, even Kruger, were greater than myself. I had the State and the army behind me; these men had nothing.”

“Foreign policy and economic affairs must never be combined with one another. Each is balanced within itself. If one of them is burdened by the other, the equilibrium is lost.”

Re Gorchakov: “He’s so vain he cannot cross a gutter without looking at his reflection in it.” And he recounts that his staff would say of him “il se mire dans son encrier” (‘he’s reflected in his inkwell’)

“My two greatest difficulties were first to get King William into Bohemia and then to get him out again.”

Re Wilhelm II: “If you do not hold fast to the string, you never know where he will be off to.”

“I am the thick shadow that stands between him and the sunshine of fame.”

“Flagrant ingratitude is not only unlovely but unwise in politics as in private life.”

“It is a principle of creation and of the whole of nature that life consists of strife… Without struggle there can be no life and, if we wish to continue living, we must also be reconciled to further struggles.”

“If I can’t lie I can’t accomplish anything.”

“I am all nerves so much so that self-control has always been the greatest task of my life and still is.”

“The unification of Germany was a conservative achievement.” 14 April 1891.

“With France we shall never have peace, with Russia never the necessity for war unless liberal stupidities or dynastic blunders falsify the situation.’ Memoirs, p247.

“Under an absolute monarchy … no-one except the sovereign can be proved to have any definite share of responsibility for its policy. If the King comes to any unfortunate decisions, no one can judge whether they are due to his own moral will, or to the influence which the most various personalities may have had upon the monarch. In the last resort the royal signature covers everything; how it has been obtained no one ever knows.” Memoirs

“A real responsibility in high politics can only be undertaken by one single directing minister, never by a numerous board with majority voting. The decision as to paths and bypaths often depends on slight but decisive changes, sometimes even on the tone or choice of expressions in an international document. Even the slightest departure from the right line often causes the distance from it to increase so rapidly that the abandoned clue cannot be recovered and the return to the bifurcation, where it was left behind, becomes impossible. The customary official secrecy conceals for whole generations the circumstances under which the track was left, and the result of the uncertainty in which the operative connection of things remains, produces in leading ministers … an indifference to the material side of business as soon as the formal side has been settled by a royal signature or parliamentary votes.’ Memoirs, p308. [Get alternative translation]

“In order that German patriotism should be active and effective it needs as a rule to hang on the peg of dependence upon a dynasty… The German needs either attachment to a dynasty or the goad of anger hurrying him into action, the latter phenomenon however by its own nature is not permanent. It is as a Prussian, a Hanoverian, a Württemberger, a Bavarian or a Hessian, rather than as a German, that he is disposed to give unequivocal proof of patriotism and in the lower orders and the Parliamentary groups it will be long before it is otherwise… The German’s love of Fatherland has need of a prince on whom it can can concentrate its attachment. Suppose that all the German dynasties were suddenly deposed: there would then be no likelihood that the German national sentiment would suffice to hold all Germans together from the point of view of International law amid the friction of European politics… The Germans would fall prey to more closely welded nations if they once lost the tie which resides in the princes’ sense of community of rank… The other nations of Europe have need of no such go-between for their patriotism and national sentiment… The preponderance of dynastic attachment, and the use of a dynasty as the indispensable cement to hold together a definite portion of the nation calling itself by the name of the dynasty, is a specific peculiarity of the German Empire. The particular nationalities … include in most cases heterogeneous elements, whose cohesion rests neither on identity of stock nor on similarity of historical development, but exclusively on the fact of some acquisition by the dynasty whether by the right of the strong, or hereditary succession by affinity or compact of inheritance, or by some reversionary grant obtained from the imperial Court as the price of vote.”

“Whatever may be the origin of this factitious union of particularist elements, the result is that the individual German readily obeys the command of a dynasty to harry with fire and sword, and with his own hands to slaughter his German neighbours and kinsfolk as a result of quarrels unintelligible to himself. To examine whether this characteristic be capable of rational justification is not a problem of the German statesman, so long as it is strongly enough pronounced for him to reckon upon it. The difficulty of either abolishing or ignoring it, or making any advance in theory towards unity without regard to this practical limitation, has often proved fatal to the champions of unity, conspicuously so in the advantage taken of the favourable circumstances in the national movements of 1848-50… In the German national sentiment I see the preponderant force always elicited by the struggle with particularism, for particularism came into being only by resistance to the collective German community, to Emperor and Empire, in revolt from both, leaning first on papal, then French, in all cases on foreign support, all alike damaging and dangerous to the German community…”

“The German people and its national life cannot be portioned out as private possessions of princely houses… That the dynasties have at all times been stronger than press and Parliament is established by the fact that in 1866 countries belonging to the Bund, whose dynasties lay within the sphere of Austrian influence, disregarded national policy and sided with Austria, those alone which lay under the Prussian guns throwing in their lot with Prussia.” Memoirs, p322.

“The expression, considered apocryphal, which Plutarch puts into Caesar’s mouth, namely, that he would rather be the first man in a wretched mountain village than the second at Rome, has always struck me as a genuinely German idea. Too many among us think thus in public life and look about for the village, and when they cannot find it on the map, look for the group, subgroup, or coterie, as may be, in which they can be first. This state of mind which you may call egotism or independence - whichever you please - has found its realization throughout German history… At the moment it finds more vigorous expression in the party system, splitting up the nation… Parties diverge less in respect of programs and principles than of the persons who stand as condottieri at the head of each, and seek to gain for themselves as large a following as possible of deputies and pushing publicists, who hope to arrive at power along with their leader. Differences of principle and program whereby the groups might be forced into conflict and hostility with one another are not forthcoming in sufficient strength to supply a motive for the passionate encounters which the groups think it necessary to wage between themselves… To fix precisely and express convincingly in a program the line where principles divide would be a difficult task even for the leaders and their henchmen - just as denominational fanatics, when you ask them to give the distinguishing characteristics of the various confessions and directions of belief, … as a rule leave you still thirsting for information. So far as parties are not grouped simply according to economic interests, they fight in the interests of the rival leaders of their groups, and not according to their personal wishes and ambitions: the whole question is one of Cephas or Paul, not a difference of principle.” Memoirs, 2p24.

“I had to take these peculiarities of my master into account if I wished to retain his confidence, and without him and his confidence my way in German politics would have been impassable.”

“[Support for social democracy] rests on the fact that the judgement of the masses is sufficiently stultified and undeveloped to allow them, with the assistance of their own greed, to be continually caught by the rhetoric of clever and ambitious leaders.” If the masses acquire too much power, the state is ruined then “the wheel of history will revolve again to dictatorship, to despotism, to absolutism, because in the end the masses yield to the need of order… And in order to purchase order from dictatorship and Caesarism they cheerfully sacrifice that justifiable amount of freedom which ought to be maintained, and which the political society of Europe can endure without ill-health.”

“Absolutism would be the ideal form of government for a European political structure were not the King and his officials ever as other men are to whom it is not given to reign with superhuman wisdom, insight and justice. The most experienced and well-meaning absolute rulers are subject to human imperfections, such as overestimation of their own wisdom, the influence and eloquence of favourites, not to mention petticoat influences, legitimate and illegitimate. Monarchy and the most ideal monarch, if in his idealism he is not to be a common danger, stand in need of criticism. The thorns of criticism set him right when he runs the risk of losing his way. Criticism can only be exercised through the medium of the free press and parliaments in the modern sense of the term. Both correctives may easily weaken and finally lose their efficacy if they abuse their powers. To avert this is one of the tasks of the conservative policy which cannot be accomplished without a struggle with parliament and press. The measuring of the limits within which such a struggle must be confined … is a question of political tact in judgement. It is a piece of good fortune to his country if a monarch possess the judgement requisite for this — a good fortune that is temporary like all human fortune.” This also needs ministers who are qualified and can operate “in the face of occasional votes of an adverse majority and of the influence of courts and camarillas.”

“All contracts between great states cease to be unconditionally binding as soon as they are tested by ‘the struggle for existence’. No great nation will ever be induced to sacrifice its existence on the altar of fidelity to contract when it is compelled to choose between the two. The maxim ultra posse nemo obligatur [no-one is obligated beyond what he is able to do] holds good in spite of all treaty formulas whatsoever, nor can any treaty guarantee the degree of zeal and the amount of force that will be devoted to the discharge of obligations when the private interests of those who lie under them no longer reinforces the text and its earliest interpretation.”

“International policy is a fluid element which under certain conditions will solidify but on a change of atmosphere reverts to its original diffuse condition. The clause rebus sic stantibus [things thus standing’] is tacitly understood in all treaties that involve performance … but eternal duration is assured to no treaty between Great Powers.”

Memoirs: The departmental minister “does not always comprehend the matter which the secretaries lay before them in the form of a draft bill… Much less do the other ministers spend time and trouble in making themselves acquainted with the contents of a new law in every detail unless it will affect their own department… The departmental minister will not be in a position to judge the effect of an intended law on practical life if he himself be a one-sided product of the bureaucracy, much less will his colleagues. Not five percent of those whom I have had the opportunity of observing are conscious of being not merely departmental ministers but also ministers of state who share in the common responsibility for their joint policy. The others confine themselves to attempting to administer their own departments free from blame, to getting the necessary supplies from the Minister of Finance and having them passed by the Diet, and to defending themselves successfully against parliamentary attacks on their department by their eloquence and, if necessary, by throwing over their subordinates.” The royal signature and parliamentary grants “prevent the question whether the law is in itself desirable from coming before the bureaucratic ministerial conscience. The interference of a colleague whose department is not directly concerned arouses the sensitiveness of the departmental minister…” The discussions in the old Council of State before 1848 had “more pointed exertion of the individual judgment and stronger stirrings of the conscience than the ministerial consultations which I have been in a position to observe for more than forty years.” Badly drafted bills and ‘ministerial nonsense’ can easily get through parliament “especially if the author of the scheme succeeds in winning for his product some influential or eloquent friend.” One might expect that most deputies would actually read legislation but despite the large number of deputies from universities and law, “few have the love of work and the feeling of duty, and these are divided among groups and parties which are in constant conflict with one another… Most members read without criticising and ask the party leaders, who work and speak for their own ends, how to vote. This is all to be explained by human nature and nobody is to be blamed that he cannot change his skin. Only we must not deceive ourselves and it is a serious error to suppose that our laws nowadays have that investigation and preparatory work which they require.” The Reichstag set up “a monument of this superficiality” when it amended the constitution itself in such a way as to leave in meaningless phrases and wrong numbering of clauses.

“I can only regret that in preparing laws the co-operation of wider circles of the kind which was given in the Council of State and in the Board for Economics has not been made sufficiently powerful against ministerial or monarchical impatience. When I found leisure to occupy myself with these problems, I occasionally expressed to my colleagues the wish that they would begin their legislative activity by publishing the draft of laws, exposing them to the criticism of publicists, listening to the greatest number of circles who understood the matter and were interested in the question — that is the Council of State, the Economic Board, and under certain circumstances the provincial Diets — before they brought them up for discussion in the ministry. I attribute the repression of the Council of State and similar consultative bodies chiefly to the jealousy with which these unprofessional advisors in public affairs are regarded by the professional secretaries and the parliaments, at the same time also to the discomfort with which ministerial omnipotence within its own department looks on the interference of others… The mere testing of drafts in the ministry is not the right way of avoiding the danger that unpractical, harmful, and dangerous proposals, drawn up in very incorrect language, should make their way from the compositions of the dilettante legislative activity of a single reporting secretary unchecked … into the collection of laws and then, until some remedy is found, form a portion of the burden which creeps among us and drags on like a disease.”

“The persuasion that an opponent, in everything he undertakes, is at best of limited intelligence, but more probably malicious and unscrupulous as well, and the aversion to dissent and break away from the members of one’s own group, still dominates the life of groups today.”

“A great state is not governed in accordance with party opinions; the sum total of the parties existing in the country has to be carefully weighed and out of that a line drawn that a government as such can pursue.”

“I have no fear that Germany will not become united; our good roads and future railroads will do their part.” Goethe, 1828.

“Build railways, not forts.” Moltke.

Moltke: getrennt marschieren, gemeinsam schlagen (march separately, strike together)

“The war of 1866 did not arise from self defence against a threat to our own existence, nor was it called for by public opinion and the voice of the people. It was a struggle recognised in council as necessary, aimed at for a very long time, and prepared with calmness. It was a struggle not for the acquisition of land, the expansion of territory, or material gain, but for an ideal good, for a position of power.” Moltke, ~1880.

“The German nation is sick of principles and doctrines, of literary greatness and a theoretical existence. What it wants is power, power, power! And whoever gives it power, to him it will give honour, more honour that he can imagine.” Julius Fröbel, revolutionary.

“He wishes à tout prix to remain possible, now and in the future. But - the means to that end! Will they be justified by it?” Roon, 1870.

“He considered vanity as a kind of mortgage on its bearer and reduced the person’s value by the exact amount of the burden. His folio in the great mortgage ledger of human failings was in this respect absolutely blank. There can be very few human beings who cared so little for outer appearances, was so indifferent to, and placed so little value on, rank, station, precedence or etiquette. He yearned neither for recognition from above nor applause from below.” Tiedemann, Bismarck’s private secretary from 1875.

“It’s hard to be Kaiser under Bismarck.” Wilhelm I. (This is widely quoted in history books but according to Fischer, recent biographer of Wilhelm, there is no source to support it and it probably emerged from Berlin gossip.)

“What he wanted belonged wholly to the past. Yet for a time, at the height of his career, the means he employed had the effect of enormously accelerating the historical process and ushering in at a rapid rate … the modern world. Largely against his will he came to play a decisive part in helping to create that world — therein lie both his historical greatness and his great limitation… In the end, perhaps like every major actor on the stage of history, he was really no more than a sorcerer’s apprentice.” Gall

“If there was a decline in international morality, the origins of this are to be found in Napoleon and his associates, not Bismarck. He only applied the maxim a corsaire, corsaire et demi.” AJP Taylor.