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Frederick II of Prussia Quotes
1712–1786 Germany
Frederick II of Prussia (January 24, 1712 – August 17, 1786) was king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786. He was also known as Friedrich der Große (Frederick the Great)
Also known as: Frederick the Great, Anti-Machiavel
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A single Voltaire will do more honor to France than a thousand pedants, a thousand false wits, a thousand great men of inferior order.
Neither antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God. — This is how Christians treat the autocrat of the universe.
It is a fact that princes who try to raise other princes with violence, end up destroying themselves.
I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people.
The mountain is passed; now we shall get on better.
Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand.
"It is enough", this malicious man tells us, "to extinguish the line of the defeated prince." Can one read this without quivering in horror and indignation?
Truth to tell, treaties are only oaths of deception and faithlessness. The jurisprudence of sovereigns is customarily the law of the strongest.
It has been said by a certain general, that the first object in the establishment of an army ought to be making provision for the belly, that being the basis and foundation of all operations.
Military Instructions (1747)
I have no fault to find with those who teach geometry. That science is the only one which has not produced sects; it is founded on analysis and on synthesis and on the calculus; it does not occupy itself with the probable truth; moreover it has the same method in every country.
As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to maintain the existence of Nothing.
But France's powerful armies, and a very large number of fortresses, ensure that the French Sovereign will possess the throne forever, and they do not have anything to fear now concerning internal wars or their neighbors invading France.
It does not pay a man to exist until the age of Methuselah by making his days indolent and useless. The more this is reflected upon, the more the reflector will desire to undertake meaningful and useful actions, the more they will have lived.
Only sneaky people and impostors can oppose the progress of sciences and can discredit them, because they are the only ones to whom the sciences do harm.
If the men were without passions, it would be forgivable to see Machiavel try to give some to them; he would be the new Prometheus bringing celestial fire to breathe life into robots. But no man is without passions. When they are moderated, they are the heart of the enterprise; but when the brake is stripped of them, they are its destruction.
Just as people are born, live a time, and die by diseases or old age, in the same way republics are formed, flower a few centuries, and perish finally by the audacity of a citizen, or by the weapons of their enemies. All has their period; all empires, and largest monarchies even, have only so much time: the republics feel continually that this time will arrive, and they look at any too-powerful family as the carriers of a disease which will give them the blow of death.
Euler calculated the force of the wheels necessary to raise the water in a reservoir … My mill was carried out geometrically and could not raise a drop of water fifty yards from the reservoir. Vanity of vanities! Vanity of geometry!
We humans are foolish in many ways: we want to conquer all as if we had all time, as if our lives did not have any end. Thus, our real time passes too quickly, and often when one believes that they are working only for themselves, they are in fact working for unworthy or ungrateful successors.
But a prince, when he binds himself, does not bind himself alone, otherwise he would be in the same position as a private individual. Instead, he exposes great countries and great provinces to a thousand misfortunes. Therefore, it is better that he should break his contract rather than that the people should perish.
If my soldiers began to think, not one would remain in the ranks.
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