I have only one ambition left: I should like to have a good epitaph.
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.
Life is like being at the dentist. You always think the worst is still to come, and it is over already.
That which is imposing here on earth has always something of the quality of the fallen angel who is beautiful but without peace, great in his conceptions and exertions but without succes, proud and lonely.
Woe to the leader whose arguments at the end of a war are not as plausible as they were at the beginning.
Nur ein Idiot glaubt, aus eigenen Erfahrungen zu lernen. Ich ziehe es vor, aus den Erfahrungen anderer zu lernen, um von vorneherein eigene Fehler zu vermeiden.
Lord takes care of babes, fools, and the United States.
The life of a man is like a game of chess, which he plays according to his art.
The position of Prussia in Germany will not be determined by its liberalism but by its power...
If this political business teaches you one thing, it is that you can be as wise as the wise men of this world, and yet you always wander into the next minute like a child into the dark.