"Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."
"Politics is the art of the next best."
"Politics is the art of the possible."
"The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions--that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849--but by iron and blood"
"Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war."
"One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans."
"The Americans have contrived to be surrounded on two sides by weak neighbors and on two sides - by fish!"
"History is simply a piece of paper covered with print; the main thing is still to make history, not to write it.”
Otto von Bismarck, master of Realpolitik, aka "The Iron Chancellor"