Otto Quotes

Why are old lovers able to become friends? Two reasons. They never truly loved each other, or they love each other still.

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

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.

The best men tell you the truth because they think you can take it; the worst men either try to preserve you in some innocent state with their false protection, or are ‘brutally honest.’ When someone tells, lets you think for yourself, experience your own emotions, he is treating you as a true equal, a friend…And the best men cook for you.

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

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

No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows it’s own weaknesses, the exact placement of the heart. The tragedy is that one can still live with the force of hatred, feel infuriated that once you are born to another, that kinship lasts through life and death, immutable, unchanging, no matter how great the misdeed or betrayal. Blood cannot be denied, and perhaps that’s why we fight tooth and claw, because we cannot—being only human—put asunder what God has joined together.

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.