Laws are like sausages. You sleep far better the less you know about how they are made.
Otto Von BismarckRead
With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.
Interpretation
Bismarck suggests that our behavior often reflects the nature of those around us.
This quote reflects the idea that we adapt our demeanor based on the characters of the people we interact with. Bismarck highlights the duality in human relationships, suggesting that with honorable individuals, we elevate our own honor, while with deceitful people, we may mirror their shortcomings to some extent. It emphasizes the complexities of social interaction and the inherent influence that others have on our behavior.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the impact of peer pressure on personal ethics.
Laws are like sausages. You sleep far better the less you know about how they are made.
Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.
Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable β the art of the next best
It is the destiny of the weak to be devoured by the strong.
A generation that has taken a beating is always followed by a generation that deals one.
The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night
Perhaps itβs that you canβt go back in time, but you can return to the scenes of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fatal decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory, the places that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess and in the end what possesses you.
There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.
Christian teaching about sex is not a set of isolated prohibitions; it is an integral part of what the Bible has to say about living in such a way that our lives communicate the character of God.
He thought that I was after him for a feather--- The white one in his tail: like one who takes everything said as personal to himself.
One of the guiding beliefs of our consuming age is that we are all free and independent individuals. That we can choose to do pretty much what we want, and if we can't, then it's bad. But at the same time, co-existing alongside this, there is a completely different, parallel universe where we all seem meekly to do what those in power tell us to do.
Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system
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