Skip to content

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.

— Frederick II of Prussia

Another quote →

More quotes by Frederick II of Prussia

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.

All Frederick II of Prussia quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Frederick II of Prussia (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.