I must protest that I would never seek foreign conflicts just to go over domestic difficulties; that would be frivolous. I was speaking of conflicts that we could not avoid, even though we do not seek them.
I am bored. The great things are done. The German Reich is made.
A Bavarian is half-way between an Austrian and a human being.
The Balkans aren’t worth the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier.
With bad laws and good civil servants it’s still possible to govern. But with bad civil servants even the best laws can’t help.
I have never lived on principles. When I have had to act, I never first asked myself on what principles I was going to act, but I went at it and did what I thought fit. I have often reproached myself for my want of principle.
Physicians still retain something of their priestly origin; they would gladly do what they forbid.
Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best.
My subject is my life, and my life is my subject.
Politics is not a science, as the professors are apt to suppose. It is an art.
Not even the King himself has the right to subordinate the interests of his country to his own feelings of love or hatred towards strangers; he is, however, responsible towards God and not to me if he does so, and therefore on this point I am silent.
A government must not waiver once it has chosen its course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.
Revolutions in Prussia are started by kings, and since it is a revolution, it is better to start it ourselves than to suffer of it.
God always looks after the fools and – and the United States.
The luxury of one’s own opinion.
This policy cannot succeed through speeches, and shooting-matches, and songs; it can only be carried out through blood and iron.
Vanity is a mortgage that must be deducted from the value of a man.
There is only one greater folly than that of the fool who says in his heart there is no God, and that is the folly of the people that says with its head that it does not know whether there is a God or not.
Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful.
War should only be used for a policy worth its sacrifices.
No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing.