Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, known as Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890. In the 1860s he engineered a series of wars that unified the German states, significantly and deliberately excluding Austria, into a powerful German Empire under Prussian leadership. With that accomplished by 1871 he skillfully used balance of power diplomacy to preserve German hegemony in a Europe which, despite many disputes...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth1 April 1815
CitySchonhausen, Germany
CountryGermany
There are two things civilized Man should never see being made: Sausages and Laws.
We are better off not knowing how sausages and laws are made.
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.
Laws are like sausages. You sleep far better the less you know about how they are made.
Laws are like medicine; they generally cure an evil by a lesser or a passing evil.
To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.
If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.
A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.
Politics is the art of the next best.
When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
Politics ruins the character.
War should only be used for a policy worth its sacrifices.
Politics is not an exact science.
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.