Oswald Spengler Quotes

Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.

When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard 'having children' as a question of pro's and con's, the great turning point has come.

Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect.

Fortunately, at the last hour, there were always a few soldiers to save Civilization.

Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears.

Optimism is cowardice.

Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals.

The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.

I maintain that to-day many an inventor, many a diplomat, many a financier is a sounder philosopher than all those who practise the dull craft of experimental psychology.

It doesn't really matter what one writes into a constitution. The important thing is what the collective instinct eventually makes of it.

Pacifism will remain an ideal, war a fact, and if the White race decides to wage it no longer, the dark ones will, and will become the masters of the world.

If few can stand a long war without deterioration of soul, none can stand a long peace.

Every Socialist outbreak only blazes new paths for Capitalism.

If you are clever enough to figure out what men want, you are either too wise to marry them or too intimidating for them to marry you.

Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.

The individual's life is of importance to none besides himself: the point is whether he wishes to escape from history or give his life for it. History recks nothing of human logic

All world-improvers are Socialists. And consequently there are no Classical world-improvers.

Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them.

When three liberals get together they form a new party; that is their idea of individualism. They never join a bowling club without introducing as part of the 'agenda' an 'amendment of the statutes.

Every action alters the soul of the doer.

Philosophy, the love of Wisdom, is at the very bottom defence against the incomprehensible.

We Germans will never produce another Goethe, but we may produce another Caesar.

History is direction—but Nature is extension—ergo, everyone gets eaten by a bear.

Tension without cosmic pulsation to animate it is the transition to nothingness

We have learned that history is something that takes no notice whatever of our expectations.

History is that form which his imagination seeks comprehension of the living existence of the world in relation to his own life, which he thereby invests with a deeper reality.

When the Englishman speaks of national wealth he means the number of millionaires in the country.

One cannot learn how to be creative by reading Marx. Either one is creative or one is not.

We Germans will never produce another Goethe but we may produce another Caesar.