Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spenglerwas a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West, published in 1918 and 1922, covering all of world history. Spengler's civilization model postulates that any civilization is a superorganism with a limited and predictable lifespan...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth29 May 1880
CountryGermany
mother successful thinking
At last, in the gray dawn of Civilization the fire in the Soul dies down. The dwindling powers rise to one more, half-successful, effort of creation, and produce the Classicism that is common to all dying Cultures. The soul thinks once again, and in Romanticism looks back piteously to its childhood; then finally, weary, reluctant, cold, it loses its desire to be, and, as in Imperial Rome, wishes itself out of the overlong daylight and back in the darkness of protomysticism in the womb of the mother in the grave.
freedom thinking people
Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.
craft dull financier german-philosopher maintain practice sounder today
I maintain that today many an inventor, many a diplomat, many a financier is a sounder philosopher than all those who practice the dull craft of experimental psychology.
almost best bore city country demanding dies fresh giant midst nourished sucks till waste
Long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.
believe air creating
And the National Socialists believe that they can afford to ignore the world or oppose it, and build their castles-in-the-air without creating a possibly silent, but very palpable reaction from abroad.
reading creative be-creative
One cannot learn how to be creative by reading Marx. Either one is creative or one is not.
expectations
We have learned that history is something that takes no notice whatever of our expectations.
country men long-ago
Long, long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.
germany may produce
We Germans will never produce another Goethe, but we may produce another Caesar.
men cities world
The last man of the world-city no longer wants to live--he may cling to life as an individual, but as a type, as an aggregate, no, for it is a characteristic of this collective existence that it eliminates the terror of death.
practice psychology crafts
I maintain that many an inventor, many a diplomat, many a financier is a sounder philosopher than all those who practice the dull craft of experimental psychology.
running men animal
Man makes history; woman is history. The reproduction of the species is feminine: it runs steadily and quietly through all species, animal or human, through all short-lived cultures. It is primary, unchanging, everlasting, maternal, plantlike, and cultureless. If we look back we find that it is synonymous with life itself.
giving wish logic
The individual's life is of importance to none besides himself: the point is whether he wishes to escape from history or give his life for it. History recks nothing of human logic
writing important matter
It doesn't really matter what one writes into a constitution. The important thing is what the collective instinct eventually makes of it.