Quotes & Sayings About Metternich

Italy is a geographical expression. — Prince Metternich

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. — Klemens Von Metternich

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. — Walter Isaacson

Error has never approached my spirit. — Klemens Von Metternich

When Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold. — Prince Metternich

The obvious is always least understood. — Klemens Von Metternich

Any plan conceived in moderation must fail when the circumstances are set in extremes. — Klemens Von Metternich

The events which can not be prevented, must be directed. — Klemens Von Metternich

The verdict on Prince Metternich will soon be out: An excellent diplomat and a bad politician. — Franz Grillparzer

When Paris has a cold, all Europe sneezes. — Klemens Von Metternich

Stability is not immobility. — Klemens Von Metternich

In Europe democracy is a falsehood. I do not know where it will end, but it cannot end in a quiet old age. — Klemens Von Metternich

The word 'Italy' is a geographical expression, a description which is useful shorthand, but has none of the political significance the efforts of the revolutionary ideologues try to put on it, and which is full of dangers for the very existence of the states which make up the peninsula. — Klemens Von Metternich

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. — Karl Marx

Bismarck's genius, as well as his great flaw, was the same as that of another outstanding nineteenth-century politician of the German-speaking world, Prince Clemens Metternich. Both men were artificers, able to hold off the future by building a fragile present out of pieces of the past. — Robert D. Kaplan

I have never feared that the revolution would be engendered by the universities; but that at them a whole generation of revolutionaries must be formed, unless the evil is restrained, seems to me certain ... The greatest and consequently most urgent evil now is the press ... All journals, pamphlets in Germany must be under a censorship. — Klemens Von Metternich

It is useless to close the gates against ideas; they overlap them. — Klemens Von Metternich

Men like M. de Talleyrand are like sharp instruments with which it is dangerous to play. — Klemens Von Metternich

Italy is only a geographical expression. — Klemens Von Metternich

A spectre is haunting Europe-the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: 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? — Karl Marx

Ten million ignorances do not constitute one knowledge. — Klemens Von Metternich

In early times, before the floods swept across the world, there was life, albeit odd, as one can see from the fossils of mammoth bones, and there was the regime of Prince Metternich. — Franz Grillparzer

The men who make history have not time to write it. — Klemens Von Metternich

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 ... — H.L. Mencken

I came into the world either too early or too late; at present, I am good for nothing. — Klemens Von Metternich