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.

I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring.

Politics is not a science, as the professors are apt to suppose. It is an art.

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.

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.

Beware of sentimental alliances where the consciousness of good deeds is the only compensation for noble sacrifices.

This policy cannot succeed through speeches, and shooting-matches, and songs; it can only be carried out through blood and iron.