As God wills — it's all just a matter of time: peoples and men, folly and wisdom, war and peace, they come and go like waves, and the sea remains. What are our states and their power and honor before God but anthills and beehives, trampled by an ox's hoof, or overtaken by fate in the shape of a honey-gatherer.

— Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), Staatsmann

Note on attribution: Zuschreibung an Bismarck nicht sicher belegt.

Topics: Time & Transience, Wisdom & Understanding

Occasions: For Reflection

Otto von Bismarck

Otto von Bismarck war ein preußisch-deutscher Staatsmann des 19. Jahrhunderts, der als erster Reichskanzler von Berlin aus die Politik des neu gegründeten Kaiserreiches lenkte. Er steht für die Einführung der modernen Sozialversicherung und ein komplexes Bündnissystem, ist jedoch wegen seiner autoritären Politik, des Kulturkampfs gegen die katholische Kirche und der Verfolgung der Arbeiterbewegung durch das Sozialistengesetz umstritten. Für Bibelleser sind vor allem seine aus einem lutherischen Glaubensverständnis hervorgegangenen Zitate über die Begrenztheit menschlicher Macht und die Verantwortung vor Gott von Bedeutung.

All quotes by Otto von Bismarck (5)

More on this topic

Inner dignity remains, even when performance capacity and social role decline.

Anselm Grün

You have enough time to do everything God wants you to do.

Craig Groeschel

My past no longer concerns me. It belongs to God's mercy. My future does not yet concern me. It belongs to divine providence. What concerns me, and what claims me, is today - it belongs to God's grace and to the surrender of my heart, my good will.

Francis de Sales

This is the end – for me the beginning of life.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Helen Keller

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare

For I have known them all already, known them all— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

T.S. Eliot

The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

All quotes · lumen.bible