Bismarck Quotes

Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.

Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others.

God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.

One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (1888).

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

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

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

Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.

Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.

It is the destiny of the weak to be devoured by the strong.

Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.

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

Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic.

man cannot control the current of events. he can only float with them and steer

Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!" -after the split between Anarchists and Marxists in 1872

Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience.

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

Hounds follow those who feed them.

They should have remembered that famous saying of Bismarck: “Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.

[Otto von Bismarck] only considered the interests of his own country - always the worst offense that a statesman can commit in the eyes of foreigners.

Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful.

the main thing is to make history not to write it

The statesman's task is to hear God's footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to His coattails as He marches past.

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

الحياة أشبه بالتواجد عند طبيب الأسنان. فأنت تعتقد دائما أن الأسوأ هو الذي لا يزال في طريقه إليك، رغم أنه يكون قد انتهى بالفعل.

Why are you so afraid of the word ‘Fascism,’ Doremus? Just a word—just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours—not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini—like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days—and have ‘em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again. ‘Nother words, have a doctor who won’t take any back-chat, but really boss the patient and make him get well whether he likes it or not!

Politics ruins the character

Woe to the statesman whose arguments for entering a war are not as convincing at its end as they were at the beginning,” Bismarck had cautioned.

We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.

A more immediate issue concerns North Korea, to which Bismarck’s nineteenth-century aphorism surely applies: “We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.

Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.

Realpolitik for Bismarck depended on flexibility and on the ability to exploit every available option without the constraint of ideology.

Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of unified Germany, once warned the world to watch out for the German people. With a good leader, they were the greatest nation on Earth. With a bad leader, they were monsters.

Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.

Not by speeches and votes of the majority, are the great questions of the time decided — that was the error of 1848 and 1849 — but by iron and blood.

If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans.

An appeal to fear never finds an echo in German hearts.

It’s hard to say something about Pushkin to a person who doesn’t know anything about him. Pushkin is a great poet. Napoleon is not as great as Pushkin. Bismarck compared to Pushkin is a nobody. And the Alexanders, First, Second and Third, are just little kids compared to Pushkin. In fact, compared to Pushkin, all people are little kids, except Gogol. Compared to him, Pushkin is a little kid. And so, instead of writing about Pushkin, I would rather write about Gogol. Although, Gogol is so great that not a thing can be written about him, so I'll write about Pushkin after all. Yet, after Gogol, it’s a shame to have to write about Pushkin. But you can’t write anything about Gogol. So I’d rather not write anything about anyone.

I have a burden on my soul. During my long life, I did not make anyone happy, neither my friends, nor my family, nor even myself. I have done many evil things...I was the cause of the beginning of three big wars. About 800,000 people were killed because of me on the battlefields., and their mothers, brothers, and widows cried for them. And now this stands between me and God.

When Leopold wrote that the precise frontiers of the new state or states would be defined later, [German Chancellor] Bismarck said to an aide, "His Majesty displays the pretensions and naive selfishness of an Italian who considers that his charm and good looks will enable him to get away with anything.

Politics is the art of the possible,the science of the relative.

The Balkans aren't worth the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier.

Politics is not an exact science.

Otto von Bismarck quipped, "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.

Words were made only for babblers, women, and lawyers. Like Bismarck once said: “Words were given to us to hide our thoughts.

SOME DAMNED FOOLISH THING in the Balkans,” Bismarck had predicted, would ignite the next war. The assassination of the Austrian heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by Serbian nationalists on June 28, 1914, satisfied his condition.

A conquering army on the border will not be stopped by eloquence.

Political judgment is the ability to hear the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history.

the words of Bismarck could be applied: “Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.

There’s a quote from Bismarck that says, in effect, any fool can learn from experience. The trick is to learn from other people’s experience. This

Konrad Adenauer became Chancellor of the new Federal Republic of Germany at the age of seventy-three, an age by which Bismarck’s career was nearing its end.

To the others of us, the mediocre and the half-hearted, the words of Bismarck could be applied: “Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.

What we learn from history is that no one learns from history

The life of a man is like a game of chess, which he plays according to his art.

[N]icht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschiedenen [...] sondern durch Eisen und Blut.

In order to retain a certain respect for sausages and laws, one must not see them being made.

We Americans are used to viewing war from a distance—the privilege of living, as Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said, with less powerful neighbors to the north and south, and nothing to the east and west but fish. Even the terrible attack on our own Pearl Harbor came thousands of miles away.

Hegelianism’ was not the stuff that popular identities are made of. The master’s work was notoriously difficult to read, let alone understand. Richard Wagner and Otto von Bismarck were among those who attempted without success to make sense of him.

Everyone who has changed the course of human history, every last one was able to do so only because he was ready for his destiny. That’s true of Moses and the Buddha, Napoleon and Bismarck. The wave that carries us, the star that guides us—we cannot choose it.

...this 'fecundity of will,' this thirst for action, when accompanied by poverty of feeling and intellect incapable of creation, will produce nothing but a Napoleon I or a Bismarck, wiseacres who try to force the world to progress backwards. While on the other hand, mental fertility destitute of well developed sensibility will bring forth such barren fruits as literary and scientific pedants who only hinder the advance of knowledge. Finally, sensibility unguided by large intelligence will produce such persons as the woman ready to sacrifice everything for some brute of a man, upon whom she pours forth all her love. If life is to be fruitful, it must be so at once in intelligence, in feeling and in will. This fertility in every direction is life; the only thing worthy the name.

[Government]is cancerous in head and limbs;only its belly is sound, and the laws it excretes are the most strightforward shit in the world.

The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was one of the few authentic geniuses among nineteenth-century statesmen.

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.’1 Chancellor Otto von Bismarck

Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others’ experience.’ This saying, quoted of Bismarck,

The simple facts of Mao’s career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28, with a dozen others, to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land–history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin–no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung’s scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China. Indeed Mao’s achievement is almost beyond our comprehension.

Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the greatest figure of the 19th century. Certainly of the five masters - Napoleon, Bismarck, Victoria, Browning and Lincoln, Lincoln is to me the most human and lovable. And I love him not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet triumphed. The world is full of illegitimate children. The world is full of folk whose taste was educated in the gutter. The world is full of people born hating and despising their fellows. To these I love to say: See this man. He was one of you and yet he became Abraham Lincoln.

Woe to the leader whose arguments at the end of a war are not as plausible as they were at the beginning.

The middle classes, grown prosperous by the belated but staggering development of the industrial revolution and dazzled by the success of Bismarck’s policy of force and war, had traded for material gain any aspirations for political freedom they may have had.

Sepanjang sejarah manusia yang ditulis—sebutlah sejarah modern, mulai dari era Renaisance pertama atau Revolusi Sosial di Inggris abad ke-16—yang disebut kiri itu ialah orang atau sekelompok orang yang tidak betah pada keadaan yang mapan dan berlangsung. Itulah kiri. Bukan karena membaca buku Karl Marx, Das Kapital, membaca Manifesto Communist, lantas membaca Bismarck tentang nasionalisme atau apapun lainnya, tidak. Kiri itu ialah orang-orang atau sekelompok orang yang tidak betah pada keadaan yang sedang berlangsung dan mapan. Itulah kiri.

Suddenly his face twisted into a sneer. ‘Oh, I can see what you’re thinking, Hartmann. “What a vulgar fellow! A car salesman! And now he fancies himself as a second Bismarck!” But we have done something your kind never managed. We have made Germany great again.’ ‘Actually,’ said Hartmann mildly, ‘I was thinking you have egg on your chin.

For nearly twenty years, Bismarck preserved the peace and eased international tension with his moderation and flexibility. But he paid the price of misunderstood greatness, for his successors and would-be imitators could draw no better lesson from his example than multiplying arms and waging a war which would cause the suicide of European civilization.

Нечленораздельные звуки - это не аргументы!

Ludzie najbardziej kłamią: po polowaniu, w czasie wojny i przed wyborami.

Lord takes care of babes, fools, and the United States.

a rich society must care for the poor

Verfallen wir nicht in den Fehler, bei jedem Andersmeinenden entweder an seinem Verständnis oder an seinem guten Willen zu zweifeln.

The bureaucracy is what we all suffer from.

We should remember what Bismarck said in 1888: “If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans.” Balkan

Bismarck urged that foreign policy had to be based not on sentiment but on an assessment of strength,” Kissinger wrote. That would also become one of Kissinger’s guiding principles.

In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of what Bismarck called “the Other Man”. The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare,

The Berlin conference has been subject to a relentless campaign of debunking by modern intellectuals. One claim they make is that the assembled delegates “carved up” Africa like a bunch of gluttons. This is wrong. For one, the carving was already happening when Bismarck acted. The conference was a response to, not a cause of, expanded colonial claims. Critics seem to think that absent the conference Africa would have been left untouched. Quite the opposite. The scramble for Africa created tensions, suspicions, and fears on all sides. Bismarck wanted to set some ground rules.

Have you ever wondered where the idea of retirement at the age of 65 came from? I'll tell you where: Otto von Bismarck, the president of Prussia, in 1889. Actually, Bismarck's government: At the time, the life expectancy of the average Prussian was about 45. Today, so many are living well into their 80s and 90s that the same promise might well bankrupt the federal government within the next generation.

That which is imposing here on earth has always something of the quality of the fallen angel who is beautiful but without peace, great in his conceptions and exertions but without succes, proud and lonely.

Bismarck had cunningly taught the parties not to aim at national appeal but to represent interests. They remained class or sectional pressure-groups under the Republic. This was fatal, for it made the party system, and with it democratic parliamentarianism, seem a divisive rather than a unifying factor. Worse: it meant the parties never produced a leader who appealed beyond the narrow limits of his own following.

The tendencies we have mentioned are something new for America. They arose when, under the influence of the two World Wars and the consequent concentration of all forces on a military goal, a predominantly military mentality developed, which with the almost sudden victory became even more accentuated. The characteristic feature of this mentality is that people place the importance of what Bertrand Russell so tellingly terms “naked power” far above all other factors which affect the relations between peoples. The Germans, misled by Bismarck’s successes in particular, underwent just such a transformation of their mentality—in consequence of which they were entirely ruined in less than a hundred years. I must frankly confess that the foreign policy of the United States since the termination of hostilities has reminded me, sometimes irresistibly, of the attitude of Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II, and I know that, independent of me, this analogy has most painfully occurred to others as well. It is characteristic of the military mentality that non-human factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc.) are held essential, while the human being, his desires and thoughts—in short, the psychological factors—are considered as unimportant and secondary. Herein lies a certain resemblance to Marxism, at least insofar as its theoretical side alone is kept in view. The individual is degraded to a mere instrument; he becomes “human materiel.” The normal ends of human aspiration vanish with such a viewpoint. Instead, the military mentality raises “naked power” as a goal in itself—one of the strangest illusions to which men can succumb.

Bismarck commiserated with Grant upon the countless fatalities of the Civil War. “But it had to be done,” Grant replied. “Yes,” said Bismarck, “you had to save the Union just as we had to save Germany.” “Not only save the Union, but destroy slavery,” Grant added. “I suppose, however, the Union was the real sentiment, the dominant sentiment,” Bismarck inquired. “In the beginning, yes,” agreed Grant, “but as soon as slavery fired upon the flag . . . we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.”71 Grant’s comments reflect the militance he had felt as president about protecting black civil rights. He now interpreted the four-year war as providential, since a shorter war might have ended up preserving slavery. They had been “fighting an enemy with whom we could not make a peace. We had to destroy him. No convention, no treaty was possible—only destruction

To combat socialism Bismarck put through between 1883 and 1889 a program for social security far beyond anything known in other countries. It included compulsory insurance for workers against old age, sickness, accident and incapacity, and though organized by the State it was financed by employers and employees. It cannot be said that it stopped the rise of the Social Democrats or the trade unions, but it did have a profound influence on the working class in that it gradually made them value security over political freedom and caused them to see in the State, however conservative, a benefactor and a protector. Hitler, as we shall see, took full advantage of this state of mind. In this, as in other matters, he learned much from Bismarck. “I studied Bismarck’s socialist legislation,” Hitler remarks in Mein Kampf (p. 155), “in its intention, struggle and success.

The search for relief from the uneasiness is what is real in Israel. Nationalism has no comparable reality. To say, as George Steiner says, that Zionism was created by Jewish nationalists who drew their inspiration from Bismarck and followed a Prussian model can’t be right. The Jews did not become nationalistic because they drew strength from their worship of anything resembling Germanic Blut und Eisen but because they alone, amongst the peoples of the earth, had not established a natural right to exist unquestioned in the lands of their birth. This right is still clearly not granted them, not even in the liberal West.

they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless. Naturally only a few people were capable of reaching great spiritual heights. But a few were given the chance to attain human greatness even through their apparent worldly failure and death, an accomplishment which in ordinary circumstances they would never have achieved. To the others of us, the mediocre and the half-hearted, the words of Bismarck could be applied: “Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.

The greatness of a man can be measured by his intelligence minus his vanity

In der Morgensonne schlenderte er über den Kurfürstendamm, kaufte sich an einem Kiosk einen Baedeker und nahm ein Taxi zum verwüsteten Reichstag, wo man emsig an der Restaurierung arbeite. Das Gebäude war barhäuptig: die große Mittelkuppel – Bismarcks Helm – war verschwunden, und als er sich umdrehte, sah er am anderen Ende der großen Wiese im Tiergarten das neue Kongreßzentrum, das exakt die Form von Hitlers Mütze hatte.

He sank more and more into apathy; little interested him apart from dolls and other children’s toys. He still spoke occasionally, but mainly to produce stock sentences in the style of a brainwashed schoolboy. Franziska made a record of some of them: ‘I translated much’. ‘I lived in a good place called Naumburg’. ‘I swam in the Saale’. ‘I was very fine because I lived in a fine house’. ‘I love Bismarck’. ‘I don’t like Friedrich Nietzsche’. It would be a mercy to think that he experienced at least a kind of vegetative contentment, but this seems not to have been the case. He suffered from his life-long curse of insomnia, and visitors downstairs were often disturbed by groans and howls coming from the upstairs bedroom. Towards the end of Franziska recorded him uttering ‘More light!’ (Goethe’s dying words) and ‘In short, dead!’ suggesting that that is what he wanted to be.

As the last factor I must in all modesty describe my own person: Irreplaceable. Neither a military man nor a civilian could replace me. Attempts at assassination may be repeated. I am convinced of my powers of intellect and of decision. Wars are always ended only by the annihilation of the opponent. Anyone who believes differently is irresponsible. Time is working for our adversaries. Now there is a relationship of forces which can never be more propitious for us. No compromises. Hardness toward ourselves. I shall strike and not capitulate. The fate of the Reich depends only on me. No one has ever achieved what I have achieved. My life is of no importance in all this. I have led the German people to a great height, even if the world does hate us now. I am setting this work on a gamble. I have to choose between victory or annihilation. I choose victory. Greatest historical choice, to be compared with the decision of Frederick the Great before the first Silesian war. Prussia owes its rise to the heroism of one man. Even there the closest advisers were disposed to capitulation. Everything depended on Frederick the Great. Also the decisions of Bismarck in 1866 and 1870 were no less great. Speech to the OKW Flensburg, November 23, 1939

Countries measured their success by the size of their territory, the increase in their population and the growth of their GDP – not by the happiness of their citizens. Industrialised nations such as Germany, France and Japan established gigantic systems of education, health and welfare, yet these systems were aimed to strengthen the nation rather than ensure individual well-being. Schools were founded to produce skilful and obedient citizens who would serve the nation loyally. At eighteen, youths needed to be not only patriotic but also literate, so that they could read the brigadier’s order of the day and draw up tomorrow’s battle plans. They had to know mathematics in order to calculate the shell’s trajectory or crack the enemy’s secret code. They needed a reasonable command of electrics, mechanics and medicine in order to operate wireless sets, drive tanks and take care of wounded comrades. When they left the army they were expected to serve the nation as clerks, teachers and engineers, building a modern economy and paying lots of taxes. The same went for the health system. At the end of the nineteenth century countries such as France, Germany and Japan began providing free health care for the masses. They financed vaccinations for infants, balanced diets for children and physical education for teenagers. They drained festering swamps, exterminated mosquitoes and built centralised sewage systems. The aim wasn’t to make people happy, but to make the nation stronger. The country needed sturdy soldiers and workers, healthy women who would give birth to more soldiers and workers, and bureaucrats who came to the office punctually at 8 a.m. instead of lying sick at home. Even the welfare system was originally planned in the interest of the nation rather than of needy individuals. When Otto von Bismarck pioneered state pensions and social security in late nineteenth-century Germany, his chief aim was to ensure the loyalty of the citizens rather than to increase their well-being. You fought for your country when you were eighteen, and paid your taxes when you were forty, because you counted on the state to take care of you when you were seventy.30 In 1776 the Founding Fathers of the United States established the right to the pursuit of happiness as one of three unalienable human rights, alongside the right to life and the right to liberty. It’s important to note, however, that the American Declaration of Independence guaranteed the right to the pursuit of happiness, not the right to happiness itself. Crucially, Thomas Jefferson did not make the state responsible for its citizens’ happiness. Rather, he sought only to limit the power of the state.

Just across from Bismarck stood Fort Lincoln where friends and relatives of Custer’s dead cavalrymen still lived, and these emigrating Sioux could perceive such bitterness in the air that one Indian on the leading boat displayed a white flag. Yet, in accordance with the laws of human behavior, the farther downstream they traveled the less hostility they encountered, and when the tiny armada reached Standing Rock near the present border of South Dakota these Indians were welcomed as celebrities. Men, women and children crowded aboard the General Sherman to shake hands with Sitting Bull. Judson Elliot Walker, who was just then finishing a book on Custer’s campaigns, had to stand on a chair to catch a glimpse of the medicine man and reports that he was wearing “green wire goggles.” No details are provided, so green wire goggles must have been a familiar sight in those days. Sitting Bull mobbed by fans while wearing green wire goggles. It sounds like Hollywood.

Robert Putnam, Harvard professor and author of Bowling Alone, has spent years studying the effects of ethnic diversity on a community’s well-being. It turns out diversity is a train wreck. Contrary to his expectation—and desire!—Putnam’s study showed that the greater the ethnic diversity, the less people trusted their neighbors, their local leaders, and even the news. People in diverse communities gave less to charity, voted less, had fewer friends, were more unhappy, and were more likely to describe television as “my most important form of entertainment.” It was not, Putnam said, that people in diverse communities trusted people of their own ethnicity more, and other races less. They didn’t trust anyone.28 The difference in neighborliness between an ethnically homogeneous town, such as Bismarck, North Dakota, and a diverse one, such as Los Angeles, Putnam says, is “roughly the same as” the difference in a town with a 7 percent poverty rate compared with a 23 percent poverty rate.29

What is all the enormous amount of activity spent uselessly in politics every day but an expression of the need to lend a hand to the coach of humanity, or at least to buzz around it . Of course this "fecundity of will," this thirst for action, when accompanied by poverty of feeling and an intellect incapable of creation, will produce nothing but a Napoleon I or a Bismarck, wiseacres who try to force the world to progress backwards. While on the other hand, mental fertility destitute of well developed sensibility will bring forth such barren fruits as literary and scientific pedants who only hinder the advance of knowledge. Finally, sensibility unguided by large intelligence will produce such persons as the woman ready to sacrifice everything for some brute of a man, upon whom she pours forth all her love. If life to be really fruitful, it must be so at once in intelligence, in feeling and in will. This fertility in every direction is life; the only thing worthy the name. For one moment of this life, those who have obtained a glimpse of it give years of vegetative existence. Without this overflowing life, a man is old before his time, an impotent being, a plant that withers before it has ever flowered.

BISMARCK: Ce e cu actiunile Cãilor ferate românesti? MINISTRU: Au fost plãtite pînã la ultima marcã. BISMARCK: si care e problema? MINISTRU: Problema este, Alteta Voastrã, ca sã folosesc cuvintele Altetei Voastre, problema este cã nici un proprietar german nu a putut proba detinerea pachetului majoritar. MINISTRU: Alteta Voastrã… Am fost lucrati. BISMARCK: Domnule ministru, dumneata esti idiot? Cum adicã am fost lucrati? MINISTRU: Voi fi direct. ... Românii rãscumpãrau actiunile, aducîndu-Ie din nou la valoare, iar cele detinute de Germania începeau sã creascã. BISMARCK: si n-au crescut? MINISTRU: Ba da, numai cã…Alteta Voastrã, românii au cumpãrat toate actiunile, dar din Germania. BISMARCK (uitindu-se cîndla secretar, cîndla ministru): Ce? SECRETAR: Ne-au înselat, domnule cancelar. Au cumpãrat actiunile cãzute din Germania pe un pret de nimic, apoi au rãscumpãrat actiunile din România. Cînd actiunile au sãrit, românii au recuperat toti banii. Sunt proprietari ai cãilor ferate...BISMARCK (printre lacrimi): Genial! Sunt geniali! Dã-mi… dã-mi… (îi cere secretarului sã-i dea pana care a cãzut pe jos; fãrã sã se opreascã din ris:) Meritã sã primeascã independenta! Bismarck semneazã actul de recunoastere a independentei României.

La gran divergencia entre los problemas del teorizante y los del político es uno de los motivos por los que casi nunca se encuentra una unión entre los dos, en una misma persona. Esto se aplica sobre todo al llamado político de "éxito", de pequeño porte, cuya actividad de facto no es nada más que el "arte de lo posible", como modestamente Bismarck denominaba a la política. Cuanto más libre se mantiene el político de grandes ideas, tanto más fáciles, comunes, rápidos y también visibles serán sus éxitos. Aunque es verdad también que éstos están destinados al olvido de los hombres y, a veces, no llegan ni a sobrevivir a la muerte de sus creadores. La obra de tales políticos es, de modo general, sin valor alguno para la posteridad, pues su éxito eventual reposa en el alejamiento de todos los problemas e ideas grandiosas que como tales hubieran sido de gran importancia para las generaciones venideras. La realización de ideas destinadas a tener influencia sobre el futuro es poco lucrativa y sí muy raramente comprendida por la gran masa, a la que interesan más las reducciones de precio en la cerveza y en la leche que los grandes planes de futuro, de realización tardía y cuyo beneficio, al final, sólo será usufructuado por la posteridad. Es así como, por una cierta vanidad, la que está siempre asociada a la política, la mayoría de los políticos se apartan de los proyectos realmente difíciles, para no perder la simpatía de la gran masa. El éxito y la importancia de ese político residen exclusivamente en el presente, y son inexistentes para la posteridad. Esos microcéfalos poco se enfadan por eso; ellos se contentan con poco. Diferentes son las condiciones del teorizante. Su importancia casi siempre está en el futuro, por eso no es raro que se le considere lunático. Si el arte del político era considerado el arte de lo posible, se puede decir del idealista que él pertenece a aquellos que sólo agradan a los dioses cuando exigen o quieren lo imposible. Él tendrá casi siempre que renunciar al reconocimiento del presente; adquiere, por ello, en el caso de que sus ideas sean inmortales, la gloria de la posteridad. En períodos raros de la historia de la Humanidad puede acontecer que el político y el idealista se reúnan en la misma persona. Cuanto más íntima fuese esa unión, tanto mayores serán las resistencias opuestas a la acción del político. Él no trabaja ya más para las necesidades al alcance del primer burgués, y sí por los ideales que sólo pocos comprenden. Es por eso que su vida es blanco del amor y del odio. La protesta del presente, que no comprende al hombre, lucha con el reconocimiento de la posteridad por la cual él trabaja. Cuanto mayores fueran las obras de un hombre para el futuro, tanto menos serán éstas comprendidas por el presente; cuanto más dura sea la lucha, tanto más raro el éxito. Si en años nada le sonríe, es posible que en sus últimos días le circunde un tenue halo de gloria venidera. Es cierto que esos grandes hombres son los corredores del maratón de la Historia. La corona de laurel del presente se pone más comúnmente en las sienes del héroe moribundo. Entre éstos se encuentran los grandes luchadores que, incomprendidos por el presente, están decididos a luchar por sus ideas y sus ideales. Son éstos los que, tarde o temprano, tocarán el corazón del pueblo. Hasta parece que cada uno siente el deber de, en el presente, redimir el pecado cometido en el pasado. Su vida y acción están acompañadas de cerca por la admiración conmovedoramente grata, lo que consigue, sobre todo en los días de tristeza, levantar corazones destrozados y almas desesperadas. Pertenecen a esta clase no sólo los grandes estadistas, sino también los grandes reformadores.