Laws are like sausages. You sleep far better the less you know about how they are made.
Otto Von BismarckRead
History is simply a piece of paper covered with print: the main thing is to make history, not to write it.
Interpretation
Making impactful contributions is more important than merely recording them.
Otto Von Bismarck suggests that actions and accomplishments hold greater significance than documentation. Writing history may preserve events, but actively shaping them is essential for true legacy, emphasizing the value of being a participant in the unfolding narrative of life rather than just an observer.
In practice
In a motivational speech, one could use this quote to encourage individuals to take initiative in their lives.
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.
With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.
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.
In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history of Rome.
When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded.
Slavery is nothing to joke about. The history of this nation's involvement with slavery is nothing to pass off in a joke.
You can't write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. 'What is criminality and what is government' is a theme that runs through every history.
The very notion of Great Britain's 'greatness' is bound up with empire. Euro-scepticism and Little Englander nationalism could hardly survive if people understood whose sugar flowed through English blood and rotted English teeth.
I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God's Will, united in spirit and in aim.
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