Von Ranke Quotes

All ages are equidistant from eternity, and just as immediately accessible to God's presence.

What ranks above all else for economic and political reconstruction is a radical change of ideologies. Economic prosperity is not so much a material problem; it is, first of all, an intellectual, spiritual, and moral problem.

It was civilization itself which inflicted this wound upon modern man. Once the increase of empirical knowledge, and more exact modes of thought, made sharper divisions between the sciences inevitable, and once the increasingly complex machinery of State necessitated a more rigorous separation of ranks and occupations, then the inner unity of human nature was severed too, and a disastrous conflict set its harmonious powers at variance. The intuitive and the speculative understanding now withdrew in hostility to take up positions in their respective fields, whose frontiers they now began to guard with jealous mistrust; and with this confining of our activity to a particular sphere we have given ourselves a master within, who not infrequently ends by suppressing the rest of our potentialities. While in one a riotous imagination ravages the hard-won fruits of the intellect, in another the spirit of abstraction stifles the fire at which the heart should have warmed itself and the imagination been kindled.

In no time, the platoon were on their feet in front of him, formed up into two ranks, and it struck him suddenly, and probably for the first time in his military career, that these men with their drilled precision were dead parts of dead machines that didn't produce anything.

What provokes me worst of all are our fateful bourgeois distinctions of rank. Of course I know as well as anyone that differences of class are necessary, and that they work greatly to my own advantage: but I wish they would not place obstacles in my way when I might enjoy a little pleasure...

State philosophy reposes on a double identity: of the thinking subject, and of the concepts it creates and to which it lends its own presumed attributes of sameness and constancy. The subjects, its concepts, and also the objects in the world to which the concepts are applied have a shared, internal essence: the self-resemblance at the basis of identity. Representational thought is analogical; its concern is to establish a correspondence between these symmetrically structured domains. The faculty of judgment is the policeman of analogy, assuring that each of these terms is honestly itself, and that the proper correspondences obtain. In thought its end is truth, in action justice. The weapons it wields in their pursuit are limitive distribution (the determination of the exclusive set of properties possessed by each term in contradistinction to the others: logos, law) and hierarchical ranking (the measurement of the degree of perfection of a term’s self-resemblance in relation to a supreme standard, man, god, or gold: value, morality). The modus operandi is negation: x = x = not y. Identity, resemblance, truth, justice, and negation. The rational foundation for order. The established order, of course: philosophers have traditionally been employees of the State. The collusion between philosophy and the State was most explicitly enacted in the first decade of the nineteenth century with the foundation of the University of Berlin, which was to become the model of higher learning throughout Europe and in the United States. The goal laid out for it by Wilhelm von Humboldt (based on proposals by Fichte and Schleiermacher) was the ‘spiritual and moral training of the nation,’ to be achieved by ‘deriving everything from an original principle’ (truth), by ‘relating everything to an ideal’ (justice), and by ‘unifying this principle and this ideal to a single Idea’ (the State). The end product would be ‘a fully legitimated subject of knowledge and society’ – each mind an analogously organized mini-State morally unified in the supermind of the State. More insidious than the well-known practical cooperation between university and government (the burgeoning military funding of research) is its philosophical role in the propagation of the form of representational thinking itself, that ‘properly spiritual absolute State’ endlessly reproduced and disseminated at every level of the social fabric.

There is a belief, current in many countries, which has been elevated to the rank of an official article of faith in the United States, that free competition is itself a homeostatic process: that in a free market the individual selfishness of the bargainers, each seeking to sell as high and buy as low as possible, will result in the end in a stable dynamics of prices, and with redound to the greatest common good. This is associated with the very comforting view that the individual entrepreneur, in seeking to forward his own interest, is in some manner a public benefactor and has thus earned the great rewards with which society has showered him. Unfortunately, the evidence, such as it is, is against this simpleminded theory. The market is a game, which has indeed received a simulacrum in the family game of Monopoly. It is thus strictly subject to the general theory of games, developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern. This theory is based on the assumption that each player, at every stage, in view of the information then available to him, plays in accordance with a completely intelligent policy, which will in the end assure him of the greatest possible expectation of reward.

Als die Schandweiber es endlich zuwege gebracht hatten, daß die Tore offenstehen und die Seele ihrer Schwester entblößt vor ihnen liegt, geben sie die Schlupfwinkel ihrer verborgenen Ranke auf und dringen mit den gezückten schwertern der Tücke in die ängltlichen Gedanken des arglosen Mädchens ein.

We see before us a series of events which follow one another and are conditioned by one another. I say ‘conditioned’ I certainly do not mean conditioned through absolute necessity. The important point is that human freedom makes its appearance everywhere, and the greatest attraction of history lies in the fact that it deals with the scenes of that freedom.

Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realize where the path they have taken is leading them. But there is an impulse within them, favored by their natures and reinforced by their habits, which they do not resist; it continues to propel them forward as long as they have a remnant of strength. He who overcomes himself is divine. Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it.1 Leopold von Ranke

Well for those who will be called upon to serve as soldiers in the ranks of whoever comes to build the new world. June, 1919.

The word for “history” in Sanskrit, itihasa, could be translated as “That’s what happened,” giving the impression of an only slightly more modest equivalent of von Ranke’s phrase for positivist history: “Wie es [eigentlich] gewesen ist” (“The way it [really] happened”). But the iti in the word is most often used as the Sanskrit equivalent of “end quote,” as in “Let’s go [iti],” he said. Itihasa thus implies not so much what happened as what people said happened (“That’s what he said happened”)—narratives, inevitably subjective narratives.

For the second time in a matter of months, federal authorities were chasing an ex-Nazi who had worked for the CIA for years as a Cold War spy. But this one was worse. This time the target was a senior SS official much higher in rank than Soobzokov. If the CIA knew enough about Soobzokov’s true past with the Nazis to torpedo his deportation case, they knew even more about von Bolschwing’s ties to Hitler. Sure enough, his CIA handlers had helped get von Bolschwing into the country in 1954, whitewashing his record to clear his entry. And CIA officials had kept quiet six years later, in 1960, when a panicked von Bolschwing rushed back to them for help after Eichmann’s capture.

The most ridiculous thing about the myth of the ‘pure Arian Race’ was the fact, that apart from Baldur von Schirach, the Commander-in-Chief of the Hitlerjugend, there was hardly anybody in the top ranks of the Party who even remotely looked like the cherished Arian ideal. Hitler himself reminded me of a southern European shopkeeper, Goebbels looked like a ladies’ hairdresser and Himmler could have been a Levantine bazaar merchant. Only Goering looked like a Germanic warrior as a fighter pilot in WW1 before he turned into a fat middle aged playboy. Today he would have worn a heavy gold chain with his open shirt, driving a Ferrari coupé.

Looking over thousands of years of human history, from the end of the prehistoric age up until the 1450s, instead of the quality of humanity being in a steady upward, progressive trajectory, von Ranke found that human beings perpetually alternated back and forth between improvement and regression, peace and war, provision and famine, unity and dissension, freedom and captivity, good and evil.

Der Knabe im Moor O schaurig ist’s über’s Moor zu gehn, Wenn es wimmelt vom Heiderauche, Sich wie Phantome die Dünste drehn Und die Ranke häkelt am Strauche, Unter jedem Tritte ein Quellchen springt, Wenn aus der Spalte es zischt und singt, O schaurig ist’s über’s Moor zu gehn, Wenn das Röhricht knistert im Hauche! Fest hält die Fibel das zitternde Kind Und rennt als ob man es jage; Hohl über die Fläche sauset der Wind – Was raschelt drüben am Hage? Das ist der gespenstige Gräberknecht, Der dem Meister die besten Torfe verzecht; Hu, hu, es bricht wie ein irres Rind! Hinducket das Knäblein zage Vom Ufer starret Gestumpf hervor, Unheimlich nickt die Föhre, Der Knabe rennt, gespannt das Ohr, Durch Riesenhalme wie Speere; Und wie es rieselt und knittert darin! Das ist die unselige Spinnerin, Das ist die gebannte Spinnlenor’, Die den Haspel dreht im Geröhre! Voran, voran, nur immer im Lauf, Voran als woll’ es ihn holen; Vor seinem Fuße brodelt es auf, Es pfeift ihm unter den Sohlen Wie eine gespenstige Melodei; Das ist der Geigermann ungetreu, Das ist der diebische Fiedler Knauf, Der den Hochzeitheller gestohlen! Da birst das Moor, ein Seufzer geht Hervoraus der klaffenden Höhle; Weh, weh, da ruft die verdammte Margreth; ,,Ho, ho, meine arme Seele!’’ Der Knabe springt wie ein wundes Reh, Wär’ nicht Schutzengel in der Näh’, Seine bleichenden Knöchelchen fände spät Ein Gräber im Moorgeschwele. Da mählich gründet der Boden sich, Und drüben, neben der Weide, Die Lampe flimmert so heimatlich, Der Knabe steht an der Scheide. Tief atmet er auf, zum Moor zurück Noch immer wirft er den scheuen Blick; Ja, im Geröhre war’s fürchterlich, O schaurig wars in der Heide!

In 1940, Heinrich Himmler, wanting to extend SS influence to the rocket program, pressured Wernher von Braun into joining the organization despite his lack of political commitment. Von Braun joined chiefly to keep working on his passion, rocketry, but his eventual rise to the rank of Sturmbannführer (major) tainted his reputation and dogged him following the war. A few years later, Arthur Rudolph and several other leading Peenemünde figures began using slave labor at the facility in 1942. Contrary to their later claims that Himmler forced this move on them, their letters and memos at the time indicate nothing but enthusiasm among this group's members for the use of Soviet, Polish, and French POWs for coerced labor.

Divorce was legalized in Maryland and Holland adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1701. On that same date the German Hohenzollern royal family was developed from former emperors, kings, princes who were descended of the Germanic kingdoms scattered throughout central Europe. On April 9, 1865, in America, General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate States of America, ended the Civil War by surrendering to General Ulysses S. Grant, Commander of the United States Forces. It wasn’t even a week later, when on April 14th, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, while watching “Our American Cousin” at the Ford Theater. The following day, as Lincoln lay dying in Washington, D.C., Otto Von Bismarck, a conservative Prussian statesman was elevated to the rank of Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen in Europe. During the second half of the 19th century as Bismarck ran German and dominated European history, Cuba fought for its independence from Spain. On April 25, 1898, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, the United States declared war against Spain. The century ended with turmoil in Europe, a free Cuba and the United States as the new world power!

official edition of his papers omitted) and had only tenuous claims to the uniforms he always wore—to the embarrassment or fury of ‘real’ soldiers. As one of the so-called ‘demi-gods’ on General Moltke’s staff, Lieutenant Colonel Bronsart von Schellendorf, wrote in 1870, ‘The civil servant in the cuirassier jacket becomes more impudent every day.’2 He had a ‘von’ in his name and came from a ‘good’ old Prussian family but, as the historian Treitschke wrote in 1862, he was apparently no more than a ‘shallow country-squire’.3 He had the pride of his social rank but understood that many occupied higher rungs than he. One of his staff recalled an instance: Most

His accent was thin and reedy. He had no gift for rousing oratory but a misplaced sense that his rank gifted him with this talent. He sounded, as Gallipoli von Kessler said, as though he were playing a flute out of his arse.

Todos los historiadores estamos de acuerdo en que la verdadera revolución de la historia, la que le hizo entrar en el panteón de las disciplinas científicas, se dio gracias al historicismo germánico decimonónico, liderado por Leopold von Ranke. Pero nadie duda tampoco a la hora de atribuir a Heródoto la paternidad de la primera separación entre historia y literatura, lo que le otorgó el mencionado título imperecedero de «el padre de la historia».

A distinguished commander without boldness is unthinkable. no man who is not…bold can play such a role, and therefore we consider this quality the first prerequisite of the great military leader. How much of this quality remains by the time he reaches senior rank, after training and experience have affected and modified it, is another question. The greater the extent to which it is retained, the greater the range of his genius.

The libraries in the sample were asked to rank themselves on a number of characteristics, including "leading edge status" (LES). (Leading edge status, a construct developed by Morrison, is related to and highly correlated with the lead

Alas, Max, this will pain you, I know, but you must realize the truth. There are movements far bigger than the men who make them up. As for me, I am a part of the movement. Heinrich is an officer in the boys’ corps, which is headed by Baron Von Freische, whose rank is now shedding a luster upon our house, for he comes often to visit with Heinrich and Elsa, whom he much admires.

[T]here have been many instances of men who have shown the greatest resolution in an inferior rank, and have lost it in a higher position. While, on the one hand, they are obliged to resolve, on the other they see the dangers of a wrong decision, and as they are surrounded with things new to them, their understanding loses its original force, and they become only the more timid the more they become aware of the danger of the irresolution into which they have fallen, and the more they have formerly been in the habit of acting on the spur of the moment.

Ron Howell founded an obscure nonprofit group called Oklahomans for Judicial Excellence. It did something unheard of: it started grading local judges based on their fealty to free-market economic theory. The group created scorecards for state judges, measuring how well their verdicts conformed with the teachings of Hayek and von Mises. The group publicized these rankings with public opinion articles published in places like the Daily Oklahoman.