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.

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

Politics ruins the character.

We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world; and it is the fear of God, which lets us love and foster peace.

The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained in one block and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world. The voice of the Rothschilds prevailed... Therefore they sent their emissaries into the field to exploit the question of slavery and to open an abyss between the two sections of the Union.

Politics is not a science...but an art.

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