Metternich Quotes

A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies. Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? Two things result from this fact. I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be in itself a power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Specter of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.

History is the memory of States.

The events which can not be prevented, must be directed.

Any plan conceived in moderation must fail when the circumstances are set in extremes.

I was sufficiently recovered from my nervous condition – or else the booze was beginning to work – to be able to discuss with Rudi the merits of checked or striped trousers, which had been the great debate among the London nobs that year. I was a check-er myself, having the height and leg for it, but Rudi thought they looked bumpkinish, which only shows what damned queer taste they had in Austria in those days. Of course, if you’ll put up with Metternich you’ll put up with anything.

Class consciousness is not one of our national diseases; we suffer, indeed, from its opposite--the delusion that class barriers are not real. That delusion reveals itself in many forms, some of them as beautiful as a glass eye. One is the Liberal doctrine that a prairie demagogue promoted to the United States Senate will instantly show all the sagacity of a Metternich ... another is the doctrine that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will cease thereby to be a moron ...

The great art is to endure

When Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold.

Dictatorship is built around this confusion. Napoleon said he only desired the greatness of France, but he proclaimed to Metternich,11 “I don’t give a damn if millions of men live or die.

They also reminded me of a story Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher included in one of his speeches about the early nineteenth-century French diplomat Talleyrand and his archrival, Prince Metternich of Austria. When Talleyrand died, Metternich was reported to have said, “I wonder what he meant by that?” It seemed that no matter what I said or how plainly I said it, the markets tried to divine some hidden meaning.

Without order as a foundation, the cry for freedom is nothing more than the attempt of some group or another to achieve its own ends. When actually carried out in practice, that cry for freedom will inevitably express itself in tyranny.

Kissinger’s main course was “Principles of International Relations,” which usually drew more than two hundred undergraduates enticed by his newfound humor and charisma. He started with Napoleon, dwelled on Metternich and Bismarck, and concluded with an analysis of the current trends in arms control.

The young comte thought nothing worthy his attention except what tended to give his country two chamber government. He left Mathilde, who was the prettiest person at the ball, with alacrity, because he saw a Peruvian general come in. Desparing of Europe such as M. de Metternich had arranged it, poor Altamira had been reduced to thinking that when the States of South America had become strong and powerful they could restore to Europe the liberty which Mirabeau has given it.

Such men as M. de Talleyrand are like sharp-edged instruments with which it is dangerous to play. But for great evils drastic remedies are necessary and whoever has to treat them should not be afraid to use the instrument which cuts the best.

Kissinger traces the balances made in foreign policy, including that of realism and idealism, from the times of Cardinal Richelieu through chapters on Theodore Roosevelt the realist and Woodrow Wilson the idealist. Kissinger, a European refugee who has read Metternich more avidly than Jefferson, is unabashedly in the realist camp. “No other nation,” he wrote in Diplomacy, “has ever rested its claim to international leadership on its altruism.” Other Americans might proclaim this as a point of pride; when Kissinger says it, his attitude seems that of an anthropologist examining a rather unsettling tribal ritual. The practice of basing policy on ideals rather than interests, he pointed out, can make a nation seem dangerously unpredictable.

Talleyrand took quill in hand and penned one of the more remarkable documents of the Vienna Congress. This paper, a letter addressed to Metternich dated the nineteenth of December, was an elegant combination of philosophy and policy that affirmed the importance of justice and the rights of states in the face of aggression in international affairs. The French foreign minister first reminded Metternich that his country asked nothing for itself. France was satisfied with its borders and had no desire whatsoever for additional territory. What his embassy hoped instead was to persuade its fellow peacemakers to agree to one guiding principle, namely, “that everywhere and forever the spirit of revolt be quenched, that every legitimate right be made sacred.

Whenever peace – conceived as the avoidance of war – has been the primary objective of a power or a group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community. Whenever the international order has acknowledged that certain principles could not be compromised even for the sake of peace, stability based on an equilibrium of forces was at least conceivable.

İmparatorluk günden güne zayıflamaktadır. Niçin saklamalı? Onu bu hale düşüren sebeplerin başında Avrupalılaşma zihniyeti gelir. Temellerini III.Selim’in attığı bu zihniyeti, derin cehaleti ve sonsuz hayalperestliği yüzünden II.Mahmut son haddine vardırır. Bâbıâli’ye tavsiyemiz şudur: Hükümetimizi dinî kanunlarınıza saygı esası üzerine kurunuz. Devlet olarak varlığınızın temeli, Padişahla Müslüman tab’a arasındaki en kuvvetli bağ dindir. Zamana uyun, çağın ihtiyaçlarını dikkate alın.İdarenizi düzene sokun ıslah edin. Ama yerine size hiç de uymayacak olan müesseseleri koymak için eskilerini yıkmayın. Avrupa medeniyetinden sizing kanun ve nizamlarınıza uymayan kanunları almayın. Batı kanunlarının temeli hristiyanlıktır. Türk kalınız. Tatbik edemeyeceğiniz kanunu çıkarmayın. Hak bellediğiniz yolda ilerleyin. Batının sözlerine kulak asmayın. Siz ilerlemeye bakın. Adalet ve bilgiyi elden bırakmayın. Avrupa efkar-ı umumiyesinin az çok değeri olan kısmını yanınızda bulacaksınız… Kısaca, biz Bâbıâli’yi kendi idare tarzının tanzim ve ıslahı için giriştiği teşebbüslerden vazgeçirmek istemiyoruz. Ama, Avrupa örnek olarak alınmamalıdır kendine. Avrupa’nın şartları başkadır, Türkiye’nin başka. Avrupa’nın temel kanunları Doğunun örf ve adetlerine taban tabana zıttır. Ithal ıslahattan kaçının. Bu gibi ıslahat Müslüman memleketlerini ancak felakete sürükler. Onlardan hayır gelmez sizlere.” METTERNICH

The year 1944 was the year of the greatest burdens in this mighty struggle. It was a year that again proved conclusively that the bourgeois social order is no longer capable of braving the storms of the present or of the coming age. State after state that does not find its way to a truly social reorganization will go down the path to chaos. The liberal age is a thing of the past. The belief that you can counter this invasion of the people by parliamentary-democratic half-measures is childish and just as naive as Metternich’s methods when the national drives for unification were making their way through the nineteenth century. The lack of a truly social, new form of life results in the lack of the mental will to resist not only in the nations but also in the lack of the moral power of resistance of their leaders. In all countries we see that the attempted renaissance of a democracy has proved fruitless. The confused tangle of political dilettantes and military politicians of a bygone bourgeois world who order each other around is, with deadly certainty, preparing for a plunge into chaos and, insofar as Europe is concerned, into an economic and ethnic catastrophe. And, after all, one thing has already been proved: this most densely populated continent in the world will either have to live with an order that gives the greatest consideration to individual abilities, guarantees the greatest accomplishments, and, by taming all egotistical drives, prevents their excesses, or states such as we have in central and western Europe will prove unfit for life, which means that their nations are thereby doomed to perish! In this manner-following the example of royal Italy-Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary collapsed during this year. This collapse is primarily the result of the cowardice and lack of resolve of their leaders. They and their actions can be understood only in light of the corrupt and socially amoral atmosphere of the bourgeois world. The hatred which many statesmen, especially in these countries, express for the present German Reich is nothing other than the voice of a guilty conscience, an expression of an inferiority complex in view of our organization of a human community that is suspicious to them because we successfully pursue goals that again do not correspond to their own narrow economic egotism and their resulting political shortsightedness. For us, my German Volksgenossen, this, however, represents a new obligation to recognize ever more clearly that the existence or nonexistence of a German future depends on the uncompromising organization of our Volksstaat, that all the sacrifices which our Volk must make are conceivable only under the condition of a social order which clears away all privileges and thereby makes the entire Volk not only bear the same duties but also possess the same vital rights. Above all, it must mercilessly destroy the social phantoms of a bygone era. In their stead, it must place the most valuable reality there is, namely the Volk, the masses which, tied together by the same blood, essence, and experiences of a long history, owe their origin as an individual existence not to an earthly arbitrariness but to the inscrutable will of the Almighty. The insight into the moral value of our conviction and the resulting objectives of our struggle for life give us and, above all, give me the strength to continue to wage this fight in the most difficult hours with the strongest faith and with an unshakable confidence. In such hours, this conviction also ties the Volk to its leadership. It assured the unanimous approval of the appeal that I was forced to direct to the German Volk in a particularly urgent way this year. New Year’s Proclamation to the National Socialists and Party Comrades Fuhrer Headquarters, January 1, 1945

Az adatok, amelyeket megbízható források a herceg felől feljegyezni érdemesnek tartottak, arra vallanak, hogy Metternich az iránt, amit általában tehetségnek hívnak,lehet, higgadt mérlegelés alapján, annyira bizalmatlan volt és azt komolyan megkonstruált életpálya számára oly kevéssé tartotta szolid bázisnak, hogy a talentumok minden nemétől óvakodott. A túlzottan fejlett képességek aránytalanságaikkal az erőket egyenlőtlenül osztják el, és az így kialakuló rapszodikus alkat a herceget szándékok tevékenységében, még inkább nemtevékenységében, károsan befolyásolta volna. Mert nem azért jött, hogy valamit csináljon, hanem, hogy csináltasson. Vannak ilyen emberek, akik kedvüket lelik, ha valahol cirkuszigazgatók. Biztosabb, ha nem saját képességeire, hanem mások tehetetlenségére épít. Introverzióját tudatosan és radikálisan lezárta. Ilyen módon figyelmét maradéktalanul a tárgyi helyzet szemléletére fordíthatta. Sohasem azzal győzött, hogy ő volt erős, hanem hogy a másik gyenge. E számítás beválik. A kedély, a szenvedélyek, a gondolatok és a meggyőződés egész problematikáját a maga számára nemlétezővé tette. Akinek ez sikerül, a világgal szemben a hűvös megfigyelő egy nemének helyzetét töltheti be. Ha valaki a bordélyt jól akarja vezetni, szigorúan puritán életet kell élnie. Az idegennél pillanat alatt megtalálja a rést, amelybe mindössze tűhegynyi tőrét beillesztheti, nem, hogy öljön, ez számára túl epikus lett volna, hanem, hogy a másikat a szúrás jelzésével figyelmeztesse, teljesen hatalmában van. Ebből a szempontból Metternich a diplomata archetípusa. Semmiféle játékba nem megy bele, minél komolyabb, annál kevésbé. Szerelmei nincsenek, annál több kalandja. Óvatosan a felületen marad, politikai megoldásaiban a leginkább, mert tudja, hogy a fontos nem a dolog maga, hanem a látszat.

Little need be said here on the vexed question of the future of Charles Albert, Prince of Carignan, and on the plan of Charles Felix, aided and encouraged by Francis IV, Duke of Modena, to set aside the Prince in the order of succession in favor of his infant son, Victor Emmanuel II.

Metternich objected to all such constitutions not merely because they were representative, and hence incompatible with absolutism, but also because they were national, and thus incompatible with the structure of the Austrian Empire. A national constitution, Metternich believed, would be the death of Austria.

Metternich employed two of his favorite devices in his attempt to meet the danger of anarchy and revolution toward which he insisted the current ministry was leading France. Through private correspondence with Decazes, he tried to convince the supple French premier that unless France altered her press and election laws in a conservative direction and otherwise imitated the policies of the Carlsbad decrees, the monarchy of Louis XVIII was doomed.

The good which proceeds from a false basis (and such a case can happen in times of upheaval) is a very real evil for the entire society. It encourages the factious, not in this respect, that they search for the good, but rather because the deceitful appeal of that good delivers over to them virtuous men and makes them their accomplices.

The King, once free, will have to assure the future of his Kingdom. He must to this effect, a) Consult the true needs of his country. These needs are composed, at Naples as everywhere else, of the strong and sustained action of the government and of guarantees which institutions suitable to the national character can offer, guarantees suitable at once to prevent the authority of government from going astray and the subjects from infringing on the authority. b) Establish and regulate the form of his administration in a way which would not be in opposition to the internal tranquillity of neighboring states.

Metternich told lies all the time, and never deceived any one; Talleyrand never told a lie and deceived the whole world.

Whenever peace--conceived as the avoidance of war--has been the primary objective of a power or a group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community.

The logic of war is power, and power has no inherent limit. The logic of peace is proportion, and proportion implies limitation.

Since it is impossible to be prepared for all eventualities, the assumption of the opponent's perfect flexibility leads to paralysis of action

la oratoria de Cicerón, la inteligencia de Richelieu, la capacidad organizativa de  Metternich y la determinación de Bismarck.

In retrospect, I think our view of market expectations was too dependent on our survey of securities dealers. Futures markets gave us a reliable read of where markets thought the federal funds rate was going—but not for our securities purchases. For that, economists at the New York Fed asked their counterparts at the securities firms, who paid careful attention to every nuance of Fed policymakers’ public statements. In effect, our PhD economists surveyed their PhD economists. It was a little like looking in a mirror. It didn’t tell us what the rank-and-file traders were thinking. Many traders, apparently, didn’t pay much attention to their economists and were betting our purchases would continue more or less indefinitely. Some called it “QE-ternity” or “QE-infinity.” Their assumption was unreasonable and entirely inconsistent with what we had been saying. Nevertheless, some investors had evidently established market positions based on it. Now, like Metternich, they looked at our statements about securities purchases and asked, “What do they mean by that?” Their conclusion, despite the plain meaning of what I said at the press conference, was that we were signaling an earlier increase in our federal funds rate target. They sold their Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities, driving up long-term interest rates.

Baron Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen had just returned from St. Petersburg, where he had been Prussian ambassador. He was a conservative of the extreme type, hated and feared by the liberal and national party no less than Metternich. But no man better than he comprehended the policy of Austria, and all the complicated threads composing

A la vez, el diario liberal Morning Chronicle se preguntaba: ¿las potencias actúan contra Bonaparte o contra el espíritu de la democracia? Pero en Viena, donde las testas coronadas celebraban su congreso, ansiaban la restauración del Antiguo Régimen y nadie resultaba más molesto para sus planes que Bonaparte. Durante una fiesta que ofrecía Metternich, a la que asistían entre otros Wellington, el zar Alejandro y, naturalmente, el omnipresente Talleyrand, llegó la noticia del desembarco de Napoleón.

Another proof for Khafre's pyramid resembling the Lower Heavens' authority on the Giza Plateau can be seen in the pharaoh's statue where Horus (contrary to the conventional claim) is not protecting his backside head with his wings nor is serving as another reference to the united Egypt, but rather is showing and pointing to the Pharaoh his domain of authority by directing his head to the same horizon at which the Sphinx is gazing right in front of that same pyramid. Remember that the Book of the Dead, Spell 83, serves as a transformation ritual into a Phoenix. And on the Metternich Stele, Horus is praised as this great Bennu Bird which as I have validly asserted and shown earlier to have the function of a courier of the upper-heavenly proclaimed tidings/news and the carrier thereof. Therefore, it is a straightforward observation now to acknowledge this second role which the Phoenix was fulfilling in ancient Egypt!

El canciller austríaco Metternich calificó a la revolución rusa de 1825 como una copia estricta de las de Madrid, Nápoles y Turín110, al tiempo que reflexionaba que la española de 1820 era «peor que la francesa de 1789», puesto que era una «revolución europea»

Profound policy thrives on perpetual creation, on a constant re-definition of goals. Good administration thrives on routine, the definition of relationships which can survive mediocrity. Policy involves an adjustment of risks; administration an avoidance of deviation. ...The attempt to conduct policy bureaucratically leads to a quest for calculability which tends to become a prisoner of events.

The ferment and frustration Margaret had witnessed firsthand in both Europe’s workers and the intelligentsia could no longer be contained. Uprisings across the Continent brought a new French republic, the resignation of Austria’s Prince Metternich in Vienna, the separation of Hungary from Austrian rule. There had been popular insurrections in all the states of Germany. Margaret was optimistic that democracy in Italy, where Milan was now “in the hands of my friends”—the young radicals she had met the previous summer—would be achieved without “need to spill much blood.

Metternich system, in a world consisting of three major elements: the European balance of power; an internal German equilibrium between Austria and Prussia; and a system of alliances based on the unity of conservative values.

Did our historian (i.e. Granovsky) really not know that great and honorable ideas (not only profit and a handful of wool) ultimately triumph among peoples and nations despite all the apparent absurd impracticality of these ideas and despite all their idealism, which is so humiliating in the eyes of the diplomats and the Metternichs? That a policy of honor and disinterestedness is not only higher but, perhaps, the most advantageous policy of a great nation, precisely because it is great?The policy of immediate practicality and endless rushing about to seek greater profit and achieve more practical aims exposes the triviality, the inner weakness, and the unhappy condition of the state.

The word 'freedom' means for me not a point of departure but a genuine point of arrival. The point of departure is defined by the word 'order.' Freedom cannot exist without the concept of order.

Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of Socialism.

was reminded of a story about the contentious talks during the nineteenth-century Congress of Vienna. After the Austrian diplomat Metternich was awakened with news that an ambassador he had been sparring with had died in the night, Metternich reportedly asked, “What can have been his motive?

This almost miraculous performance was due to the working of the balance of power, which here produced a result which is normally foreign to it. By its nature that balance effects an entirely different result, namely, the survival of the power units involved; in fact, it merely postulates that three or more units capable of exerting power will always behave in such a way as to combine the power of the weaker units against any increase in power of the strongest. In the realm of universal history balance of power was concerned with states whose independence it served to maintain. But it attained this end only by continuous war between changing partners. The practice of the ancient Greek or the Northern Italian city-states was such an instance; wars between shifting groups of combatants maintained the independence of those states over long stretches of time. The action of the same principle safeguarded for over two hundred years the sovereignty of the states forming Europe at the time of the Treaty of Minster and Westphalia (1648). When, seventy-five years later, in the Treaty of Utrecht, the signatories declared their formal adherence to this principle, they thereby embodied it in a system, and thus established mutual guarantees of survival for the strong and the weak alike through the medium of war. The fact that in the nineteenth century the same mechanism resulted in peace rather than war is a problem to challenge the historian. The entirely new factor, we submit, was the emergence of an acute peace interest. Traditionally, such an interest was regarded as outside the scope of the state system. Peace with its corollaries of crafts and arts ranked among the mere adornments of life. The Church might pray for peace as for a bountiful harvest, but in the realm of state action it would nevertheless advocate armed intervention; governments subordinated peace to security and sovereignty, that is, to intents that could not be achieved otherwise than by recourse to the ultimate means. Few things were regarded as more detrimental to a community than the existence of an organized peace interest in its midst. As late as the second half of the eighteenth century, J. J. Rousseau arraigned trades people for their lack of patriotism because they were suspected of preferring peace to liberty. After 1815 the change is sudden and complete. The backwash of the French Revolution reinforced the rising tide of the Industrial Revolution in establishing peaceful business as a universal interest. Metternich proclaimed that what the people of Europe wanted was not liberty but peace. Gentz called patriots the new barbarians. Church and throne started out on the denationalization of Europe. Their arguments found support both in the ferocity of the recent popular forms of warfare and in the tremendously enhanced value of peace under the nascent economies.

Haití se ha independizado de Francia; la Nueva Granada ha quedado libre en la batalla de Boyacá dirigida por Bolívar, y Venezuela en la de Carabobo, asimismo comandada por el Libertador. Sucre ha conquistado la liberación del Ecuador en Pichincha. Al sur de América, las provincias del Río de la Plata y Chile, han sido también convertidas en Repúblicas autónomas. La propia España, por su parte, ha expulsado, con la ayuda de los ingleses, a las tropas napoleónicas y ha redactado una Constitución Liberal –Cortes de Cádiz, 1812–, en que han intervenido delegados americanos; pero esta novedad se presenta demasiado tarde y no logra detener la lucha por la independencia del Nuevo Mundo hispano. Por esos años, hay aspectos estrictamente negativos: algunos grandes han sido sacrificados: Francisco de Miranda muere en Cádiz, prisionero de los españoles (era mayor que Robinson con veinte años); en México han perecido, ajusticiados por la monarquía hispana, los clérigos libertadores Miguel Hidalgo y José María Morelos. Cuba no ha encontrado vía para su liberación. Robinson es testigo de la expansión del pensamiento político liberal en Europa. Pero, cerrado el ciclo napoleónico en Waterloo (1815), esa doctrina empieza a tambalear. Metternich encarna la reacción. Empiezan las rebeliones en Nápoles, Rusia, Francia, Portugal, Alemania, Grecia. Se hace, así, un contraste, se plasma la dicotomía: mientras en el Viejo Mundo aparece y se ensancha la crisis, con mengua del liberalismo, en América hispana este credo avanza y se fortalece, en tanto que se multiplican los éxitos bélicos contra España.

The reaction against Metternich's smug self-satisfaction and rigid conservatism has tended... to take the form of denying the reality of his achievements.

As implausible as it appears to us today, otherwise serious statesmen like Metternich made policy assuming that the secret cabal of the Knights Templar, the Illuminati, the Freemasons, linked by hidden cells of Jacobins, all joined together as parts of an insidious global network.

Coalitions: Coalitions are created out of fear, not out of affection between states. Coalitions: Many rush to the aid of the victor, the allies of the defeated melt away. Coalitions, command and control: War cannot be fought successfully by committee; a simpler structure of command and control is required for victory. Wars must be led single-mindedly; they need a single point of authority to lead the collective enterprise, but the jealousies of coalition members make this resolution difficult. Coalitions, command and control: "If a great state is forced to act in a situation of great peril, it must at least secure for itself the position of supreme leadership." — Metternich, 1854

Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective of a power or a group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community. Whenever the international order has acknowledged that certain principles could not be compromised even for the sake of peace, stability based on an equilibrium of forces was at least conceivable.