Top 90 Otto von Bismarck Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Politics is no exact science.”

— Otto von Bismarck

52. “Show me an objective worthy of war and I will go along with you.”

— Otto von Bismarck

53. “People who love sausage and people who believe in justice should never watch either of them being made.”

— Otto von Bismarck

54. “I am accustomed to pay men back in their own coin.”

— Otto von Bismarck

55. “Hounds follow those who feed them.”

— Otto von Bismarck

56. “The nation that has the schools has the future.”

— Otto von Bismarck

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

— Otto von Bismarck

58. “Earthly majesty is always akin to the fallen angel, who is proud and unhappy, beautiful but troubled, and whose plans and efforts, though vast, are denied access.”

— Otto von Bismarck

59. “A government must not waiver once it has chosen its course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.”

— Otto von Bismarck

60. “The Catholic priest, from the moment he becomes a priest, is a sworn officer of the pope.”

— Otto von Bismarck

61. “We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.”

— Otto von Bismarck

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

— Otto von Bismarck

63. “Laws are like medicine; they generally cure an evil by a lesser or a passing evil.”

— Otto von Bismarck

64. “I have often regretted what I have eaten, but never what I have drunk.”

— Otto von Bismarck

65. “A generation that has taken a beating is always followed by a generation that deals one.”

— Otto von Bismarck

66. “The most significant event of the 20th century will be the fact that the North Americans speak English.”

— Otto von Bismarck

67. “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.”

— Otto von Bismarck

68. “You can do everything with bayonets, but you are not able to sit on them.”

— Otto von Bismarck

69. “I am bored. The great things are done. The German Reich is made.”

— Otto von Bismarck

70. “I have always found the word ‘Europe’ on the lips of those who wanted something from others which they dared not demand in their own names!”

— Otto von Bismarck

71. “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.”

— Otto von Bismarck

72. “Politics ruins the character.”

— Otto von Bismarck

73. “We are better off not knowing how sausages and laws are made.”

— Otto von Bismarck

74. “One can put some trust in the gratitude of a sovereign, and also in that of his family; under certain conditions, one can even rely upon it; but one can never expect anything from the gratitude of a nation.”

— Otto von Bismarck

75. “War should only be used for a policy worth its sacrifices.”

— Otto von Bismarck

76. “I have found that nothing so deceives your adversaries as telling them the truth.”

— Otto von Bismarck

77. “Nothing should be left to an invaded people except their eyes for weeping.”

— Otto von Bismarck

78. “In England the more horses a nobleman has, the more popular he is. So long as the English are devoted to racing, Socialism has no chance with you.”

— Otto von Bismarck

79. “I consider even a victorious war as an evil, from which statesmanship must endeavor to spare nations.”

— Otto von Bismarck

80. “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.”

— Otto von Bismarck

81. “There are two things civilized Man should never see being made: Sausages and Laws.”

— Otto von Bismarck

82. “Let us put Germany, so to speak, in the saddle! you will see that she can ride.”

— Otto von Bismarck

83. “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.”

— Otto von Bismarck

84. “To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.”

— Otto von Bismarck

85. “Physicians still retain something of their priestly origin; they would gladly do what they forbid.”

— Otto von Bismarck

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

— Otto von Bismarck

87. “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.”

— Otto von Bismarck

88. “The life of a man is like a game of chess, which he plays according to his art.”

— Otto von Bismarck

89. “Lord takes care of babes, fools, and the United States.”

— Otto von Bismarck

90. “The position of Prussia in Germany will not be determined by its liberalism but by its power...”

— Otto von Bismarck

91. “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.”

— Otto von Bismarck

92. “Universal suffrage is the government of a house by its nursery.”

— Otto von Bismarck

93. “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.”

— Otto von Bismarck

94. “I must protest that I would never seek foreign conflicts just to go over domestic difficulties; that would be frivolous. I was speaking of conflicts that we could not avoid, even though we do not seek them.”

— Otto von Bismarck