Historical Quotes

"You can good govern with bad laws but good officials. But with bad officials even the best laws can't help."

Otto von Bismarck

"I do only believe in the statistics I faked myself."

Winston Churchill

"Thoughts are free."

Cicero

Adler
 
Anyone have a good quote about the power of trade? Also, here is my favorite quote of all time:

“We Mongols believe that there is but one G-d, in Whom we live and in Whom we die, and towards him we have an upright heart. But just as G-d has given different digits to the palm, so He has given different religions to men.”
– Möngke Khan (1208-1259), Grandson of Genghis Khan, Fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, spoken to the European traveller Friar William of Rubruck. He was purportedly drunk at the time, although he was purportedly drunk all of the time.
 
Dulce et Decoro est pro Patria Mori - it is sweet and fitting to die for one's Fatherland. Some Roman poet whose name escapes me. I rather like the eponymous poem Wilfred Owen wrote in response.

It's actually the title of a Siegfreed Sasoon poem.

"Few people will die for liberty. Most of us just want good masters." - A Roman fella.
 
Eran of Arcadia said:
Dulce et Decoro est pro Patria Mori - it is sweet and fitting to die for one's Fatherland. Some Roman poet whose name escapes me. I rather like the eponymous poem Wilfred Owen wrote in response.
The original is by Horace.:)

Berthold Brecht got himself expelled from his veeery patriotic German Gymnasium as a youth, for taking the piss out of old Horace and that pious and patriotic lie of his.:goodjob:
 
Israelite9191 said:
How true. The rabbis actually say that alchohol brings out people's true thoughts and clears away from the mind societal apprehensions.
"You don't really know a Swede until you've seen him properly drunk."
— Jan Myrdal

Them rabbis might be Swedish?;)
 
Speaking of Bismarck, this may have already been posted but one of my favorite quotes from him is:

The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.


...which was completely true, especially back in his time. Simple, yet highly accurate, and insightful. Otto really understood how to divide and conquer, I'd say.
 
In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory.

But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.

-Isoroku Yamamoto
 
Cuchullain said:
"Lord, make me chaste --- but not yet!", St.Augustine
Of course, this is a bit of a misrepresentation, since when he wrote this it was specifically to disavow the sentiment, which he had held in his youth. ("When I was young I used to pray to you, O Lord, give me humility and chastity-- but not yet.")

Poor Augustine was always somewhat uncomfortable about sexuality, mostly because in his early teens, his father would take him to the bathhouse and loudly show off his precocious, er, development to the other men (including the fathers of the girls he knew).
 
Winston Churchill= A bulldog of wisdom
 
Taliesin said:
Of course, this is a bit of a misrepresentation, since when he wrote this it was specifically to disavow the sentiment, which he had held in his youth. ("When I was young I used to pray to you, O Lord, give me humility and chastity-- but not yet.")
A point I readily concede, yet it is an amusing quote nonetheless, especially from a man who would later become one of the most influential --- and most conservative --- theologians in history.
 
"Don't be afraid of your king! Love him!"
Frederic Wilhelm I said that while beating a peasant, who, scared of him, has hidden in the bushes.

"God, forgive me. My life was one great sin"
the last words of (Frederic) August II, the king of Poland, grand prince of Lithuania and elector of Saxony.

"Poland is Lwow, Vilnius, Grodno... And Warsaw? it is just a jewish village over german boarder" (about like that)
I think it was Cat-Mackiewicz, prime minister of Poland.
the funny thing is that none of the cities mentioned above belongs to Poland today...
 
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