Otto von Bismarck quotes - page 3
Concerning the blunders which had been made in our foreign policy public opinion is, as a rule, first enlightened when it is in a position to look back upon the history of a generation, and the Achivi qui plectuntur are not always immediately contemporary with the mistaken actions.
Otto von Bismarck
The interests of the state alone have guided me, and it has been a calumny when publicists, even well-meaning, have accused me of having ever advocated an aristocratic system. I have never regarded birth as a substitute for want of ability; whenever I have come forward on behalf of landed property, it has not been in the interests of proprietors of my own class, but because I see in the decline of agriculture one of the greatest dangers to our permanence as a state. The ideal that has always floated before me has been a monarchy which should be so far controlled by an independent national representation-according to my notion, representing classes or callings-that monarch or parliament would not be able to alter the existing statutory position before the law separately but only communi consensu; with publicity, and public criticism, by press and Diet, of all political proceedings.
Otto von Bismarck
The German who is still free from all Slav or Celtic alloy has a distinctive character and vies with all his equals. When he is allied with other races, provided he has the necessary patience and endurance he always succeeds in becoming, the chief, the directing will, as the husband must be in a household. I have no desire to offend the Slavs, but it is very necessary to recognise that their character has much of the feminine in it: they have charm, intelligence, artifice, address, and often the Germans appear heavy and clumsy beside them. But we always carry the day, and that is why I would like to say to you: when you are doing business with your Slav rivals, even at moments of the most violent anger and in the most critical situations, always retain the profound conviction, the most profound but secret conviction, that you are fundamentally their superiors, and that you always will be so.
Otto von Bismarck
I leave undecided the question whether complete mutual freedom of international commerce, such as is contemplated by the theory of Free Trade, would not serve the interests of Germany. But as long as most of the countries with which our trade is carried on surround themselves with customs barriers...it does not seem to me justifiable, or to the economic interest of the nation, that we should allow ourselves to be restricted in the satisfaction of our financial wants by the apprehension that German products will thereby be slightly preferred to foreign ones. ... The minority of the population, which does not produce at all, but exclusively consumes, will apparently be injured by a customs system favouring the entire national production. Yet if by means of such a system the aggregate sum of the values produced in the country increase, and thus the national wealth be on the whole enhanced, the non-producing parts of the population...will eventually be benefited.
Otto von Bismarck
If we really came to a position in which we could no longer produce the grain which we must necessarily consume, then in what state would we be if in wartime we had no Russian grain imports and perhaps simultaneously were blockaded along our coasts – in other words, if we had no grain at all?
Otto von Bismarck
