man cannot control the current of events. he can only float with them and steer

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.

Hounds follow those who feed them.

[Government]is cancerous in head and limbs;only its belly is sound, and the laws it excretes are the most strightforward shit in the world.

Woe to the leader whose arguments at the end of a war are not as plausible as they were at the beginning.

The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.

Political judgment is the ability to hear the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history.

It is the destiny of the weak to be devoured by the strong.

Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best

Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!”-after the split between Anarchists and Marxists in 1872

People never lie so much as before an election, during a war, or after a hunt.

the great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood

Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience.

the main thing is to make history not to write it

An appeal to fear never finds an echo in German hearts.

[N]icht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschiedenen […] sondern durch Eisen und Blut.

Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic.

Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.