QUOTES

 I love famous quotes and have featured them often in my This N That offering.  We'll see how this goes.

Today I start with Otto von Bismarck.   Here we have a German statesman and diplomat.  He was the Chancellor of the German Empire (it's first) near the end of the 19th century and is credited with unifying the Prussian Empire into what we call Germany.  In just 20 years after his departure, Germany would be the belligerent in World War I.  He was a very quotable personage.  

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

"I grant that I am full of prejudices.  I sucked them in with my mother's milk and I cannot possibly argue them away."  1847

"It is not by speeches and majority vote that the great questions of our time will be decided - as that was the error of 1848 and 1849 - but rather by iron and blood."  1862

"Politics is not an exact science."  1863

"God has a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America."  

"Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death."  1875

"Every state must be aware that its peace, its security rests on its own sword."  

"All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence."  

When asked what was the greatest political fact of modern times, Bismarck is reported to have responded that it was "the inherited and permanent fact that North America speaks English."

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