Otto von Bismarck

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

Politics is the art of the next best.

With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.

When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.

There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.

Politics is the art of the possible.

A statesman must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.

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

The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

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

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.

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

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