Von Quotes

They make life unnecessarily difficult for themselves by looking for deep thoughts and ideas everywhere and putting them into everything. just have the courage to
give yourself up to first impressions..don't think all the time that
everything must be pointless if it lacks an abstract thought or idea ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I will say nothing against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In my dear pine-clad mountains of the Harz There's a pitchlike smell, a smell I favor Most of all, excepting that of sulphur. But here among these Greeks there's not a trace Of anything like that. I'm curious To find out what they use below in their Hell To stoke the fires with, their kind of fuel. DRYAD. I guess you're smart enough in your own country, Abroad you're something less than apt; 8220 Stop thinking home thoughts, try, Sir, to adapt And show due honor to our sacred oak tree. MEPHISTO. What you have lost, that's what you think about, ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

My dear lady, you have no idea just how scandalous I can be. ~Peter Viktor von Strassenberg, 1905 ~ Gwenn Wright

Man did not address his inquiries to the earth on which he stood until a remarkably late stage in the development of his desire for knowledge. And the answers he received to the questions, "Where do I come from?", "What is man?", although they made him poorer by a few illusions, gave him in compensation a knowledge of his past that is vaster than he could ever have dreamed. For it emerged that the history of life was his history too ... ~ Gustav Heinrich Ralph Von Koenigswald

The iron hand of necessity commands, and her stern decree is supreme law, to which the gods even must submit. In deep silence rules the uncounselled sister of eternal fate. Whatever she lays upon thee, endure; perform whatever she commands. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Goals change, ideas of technology are transformed, but action always remains action. Action always seeks means to realize ends, and it is in this sense always rational and mindful of utility. It is, in a word, human. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

There's a boy who they call Pony! He's always acting gross and horny! He thinks he's got a lot down there, but he sure wears tiny underwear! ~ Cecily Von Ziegesar

What you wish to do you are apt to think you ought to do. ~ Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

Everyone has to work out his own destiny. - Goethe ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The American government has been harvesting the Middle Eastern grapes of wrath for a generation and not making a secret of it, either. As lousy as the mass media may be, there was enough news about what was transpiring, year after year, to get the gist of what was happening ... No American can truthfully say that they could not find out what was going on ... ~ Nicholas Von Hoffman

It is solely bigness in business which makes it possible to supply the masses with all those products the present-day American common man does not want to do without. Luxury goods for the few can be produced in small shops. Luxury goods for the many require big business. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

I don't want to tell you what to buy. I just want to help you think about why you're buying it. ~ Alexa Von Tobel

I was slowly taking on the dimensions of a chest of drawers. ~ Maria Franziska Von Trapp

All that Lenin learned about business from the tales of his comrades who occasionally sat in business offices was that it required a lot of scribbling, recording, and ciphering. Thus, he declares that accounting and control are the chief things necessary for the organizing and correct functioning of society ... Here we have the philosophy of the filing clerk in its full glory. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The beginning of faith is the beginning of fruitfulness; but the beginning of unbelief, however glittering, is empty. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I was reared in an atmosphere where a great deal of attention was paid to women's hairdressing. ~ Erich Von Stroheim

We must evaluate the political sympathies of other states and the effect war may have on them. To assess these things in all their ramifications and diversity is plainly a colossal task. Rapid and correct appraisal of them clearly calls for the intuition of a genius; to master all this complex mass by sheer methodical examination is obviously impossible. Bonaparte was quite right when he said that Newton himself would quail before the algebraic problems it could pose. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a man. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I've always loved the idea of not being what people expect me to be. ~ Dita Von Teese

The soul is indestructible and its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I went to Colby College in Waterville, ME and did picture it when I was writing 'Cum Laude.' So many of the physical details were included, like the loop where people jogged. The story of the chapel is also borrowed from Colby ... but the students and cast of characters are fictional. ~ Cecily Von Ziegesar

For as long as one has no further point of reference, apart from the position of the maximum, the wavelength thus remains uncertain by an integral factor. ~ Max Von Laue

A society that does not recognise that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

He was "a magician, a magician in the sense that he took what was given and simply forced the conclusions logically out of it, whether it was algebra, geometry, or whatever. He had some way of forcing out the results that made him different from the rest of the people." Israel Halperin about von Neumann ~ Robert Leonard

In late 1915 there appeared on the Western Front a German flier named Manfred von Richthofen, known as the Red Baron, after his royal title and a penchant for painting his squadron's Fokker triwing fighters red. He was a natural born killer who shot down more than eighty enemy aircraft before himself being fatally brought down by ground fire ~ Winston Groom

I'll see the sprouts in the morning when you wake up from sleep, and with glee look at the way the bright sun, I'll see it ... And then I have no more desire for others the whole day. Everything, everything is covered with these expectations. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

When we love somebody, whether it be a friend, a parent, a child, whether it be conjugal love or neighborly love, the beloved person always stands before us as something precious and noble in himself. ~ Dietrich Von Hildebrand

Man is a simple being, and however rich, varied, and unfathomable he may be, the cycle of his situations is soon run through. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

One does not want to tear oneself away from this anguish. ~ Nadezhka Von Meck

In one area in Serbia two villages have been reduced to ashes. In Greece 220 men of one village have been shot. In France there are extensive shootings while I write. Certainly more than a thousand people are murdered in this way every day and another thousand German men are habituated to murder. May I know this and yet sit at my table in my heated flat and have tea? What shall I say when I am asked: And what did you do during that time? How can anyone know these things and still walk around free? ~ Helmuth James Graf Von Moltke

One spares old people just as one spares children. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Alfred Nobel believed that social changes are brought about slowly, and sometimes by indirect means. ~ Bertha Von Suttner

Unemployment doles can have no other effect than the perpetuation of unemployment. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

A purpose you impart is no longer your own. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

As society is only possible if everyone, while living his own life, at the same time helps others to live; if every individual is simultaneously means and end; if each individual's well-being is simultaneously the condition necessary to the well-being of others, it is evident that the contrast between I and thou, means and end, automatically is overcome. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become the majority view in some distant future. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

It is ironic that Keynesianism originated as a weapon to combat depression, but became universally accepted and "successful" only during (and because of!) the postwar expansion. At the first sign of renewed world recession, Keynesian theory has proved itself to be a snare and a delusion that has gone into immediate bankruptcy. The resulting "post-Keynesian synthesis" is also the theoretical reason for the reactionary exhumation of the simplistic, neoclassical, and monetarist economic theory of the 1920s. This revival of old theory is highlighted by the award of Nobel prizes in economics to Friedrich von Hayek, whose theoretical work was done before the Great Depression, and Milton Friedman, whose lone voice echoed in the wilderness until the new world economic crisis put his unpopular and antipopulist theories on the agenda of business board rooms and government cabinet rooms in one capitalist country after another. The real reason for the recent interest in fifty-year-old theories is that capital now wants them to legitimize its attack on the welfare state and "unproductive" expenditures on social services, which capital claims to need for "productive" investment in industry, including armaments. ~ Andre Gunder Frank

There is a river running through this city and every time my best friend laughs I want to grab him by the shoulders and shout Grow old with me and never kiss me on the mouth! I want to spend the next eighty years together, eating Doritos and riding bikes. ~ Clementine Von Radics

Live dangerously and you live right. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Dangerous forces lie within me. You awaken them, and not to your advantage. You know how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance in glowing colors. ~ Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

I have wished to crush Rome that I might crush Christianity. ~ Otto Von Bismarck

If you're short, don't wear extremely high heels. After a certain age, you shouldn't wear little girls' clothes. That's going against your nature. ~ Diane Von Furstenberg

He only earns his freedom and existence who daily conquers them anew. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There is no room at all for independent enterprise under any variety of State Socialism. Prices are to be regulated authoritatively; authority is to fix what is to be produced, and how, and in what quantities. There is to be no speculation, no 'excessive' profit, no loss. There is to be no innovation unless it be decreed by authority. The official is to direct and supervise everything. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

There is no higher or purer pleasure than to sit with closed eyes and hear a naturally expressive voice recite ... a play of Shakespeare's. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The tow pillars of democratic government are the primacy of the law and the budget. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Each epoch has found in the Gospels what it sought to find there, and has overlooked what it wished to overlook. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Try novelties for salesman's bait, For novelty wins everyone. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

(Heinrich von) Kleist would not be a Prussian if his first thought would not have been orderlinessand he would not be a German if he had not placed all his hopes of developing this inner orderliness into education. Education is the secret of life for him as for every German: studying, learning a lot from books, sitting in lectures, keeping notebooks, listening intently to professors ... ~ Stefan Zweig

Sea-Monkeys are hybrid brine shrimp and the brainchild of the mail-order entrepreneur Harold von Braunhut in 1957. When their crystallized eggs are submerged in water, minuscule crustaceans emerge; they can grow up to 2 inches long. ~ Brendan I. Koerner

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

[Socialistic] economic planning, regulation, and intervention pave the way to totalitarianism by building a power structure that will inevitably be seized by the most power-hungry and unscrupulous. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

A part of that Power that, always wishing for Evil, only knows how to do Good.

-Mephistopheles ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

No increase in the welfare of the member of society can result from the availability of an additional quantity of money. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Just imagine going to war over Danzig - such a world catastrophe, just to prevent Germany from getting a piece of territory that belonged to her; because Britain was afraid of Germany getting too strong. ~ Joachim Von Ribbentrop

When scholars study a thing, they strive to kill it first, if it's alive; then they have the parts and the'be lost the whole, for the link that's missing was the living soul. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

However much you paid for a beautiful illusion, you got a bargain. ~ Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

Ill-humour resembles indolence: it is
natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The light is there, and colors surround us. However, if there were no light nor colors in our own eye, we wouldn't perceive such things outside of us. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The wise man is seldom prudent. ~ Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

The sceptic only stumbles at matter of fact. ~ Karl Ludwig Von Knebel

If there is no personal God,everything is permissablel, and if God exists,everthing is possible. ~ Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Without war no State could be. All those we know of arose through war, and the protection of their members by armed force remains their primary and essential task. War, therefore, will endure to the end of history, as long as there is a multiplicity of states. ~ Heinrich Von Treitschke

What matters creative endless toil, When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil? ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

To be active is the primary vocation of man. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Numbers instill a feeling for the lie of the land, and furnish grist for the mathematical mill that is the physicist's principal tool. ~ Hans Christian Von Baeyer

Winter has caused damage everywhere: meadow and forest are all grey, where before you heard many sounds. If I could see the girls play ball on the street, then bird song would come back. If only I could sleep through the winter! When I am awake I feel only hatred that his power is so far and wide. God knows, he even fights with May; I picked flowers where there is now snow. ~ Walther Von Der Vogelweide

The unprecedented success of Keynesianism is due to the fact that it provides an apparent justification for the 'deficit spending' policies of contemporary governments. It is the pseudo-philosophy of those who can think of nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

From a blow. His yellow eyes clung to von Hallstatt. He desperately ~ Louis L'Amour

Every extension of the functions and power of the State beyond its primary duty of maintaining peace and justice should be scrutinized with jealous vigilance. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

My beauty icons are women whose images are self-created. ~ Dita Von Teese

The bee's life is like a magic well: the more you draw from it, the more it fills with water ~ Karl Von Frisch

Party domination and State leadership are concepts incompatible with one another. ~ Franz Von Papen

There is no kind of freedom and liberty other than the kind which the market economy brings about. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The malefactor is you. And so I would like to know who you are, what you are, where you are, whence you are, and what good you do, for you to possess so much power and to have challenged me so evilly without warning, desolated my bliss-covered meadow, undermined and brought down my tower of strength.

Ah God, Consoler of all afflicted hearts, console and compensate me, this poor, grieving, miserable, lone-sitting man! Send, Lord, plagues; undertake retaliation; shackle and eradicate abominable Death, Your enemy, and enemy to all! Truly, Lord, there is nothing in Your creation more heinous, nothing more hideous, nothing more cruel, nothing more unjust, than Death! He distresses and destroys Your entire earthly realm; he takes the upright away before the dishonest; the harmful, the old, the infirm, the useless, he often leaves here; the good and the useful, he carries all of them off. Pass judgement, Lord, just judgement on the false judge! ~ Johannes Von Saaz

The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong" beliefs. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

Tolerance should, strictly speaking, be only a passing mood; it ought to lead to acknowledgment and appreciation. To tolerate a person is to affront him. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

considering that lexicons and dictionaries are practically a high art form in German- speaking countries. The entry merges Essad Bey and Wolfgang von Weisl into one person. It explains that "Wolfgang (von) Weisl" also used the pseudonyms Leo Noussimbaum, Essad Bey, and Kurban Said - and hence the Austrian journalist, who otherwise had only a travel book and a book on Austrian artillery to his credit, suddenly was the prolific author of approximately twenty works of fiction and nonfiction ~ Tom Reiss

I could never learn to be totally fluent in any other language. ~ Max Von Sydow

Once more she had that really rather disgusting suspicion that her life till now had not only been loud but empty. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward. ~ Otto Von Bismarck

Tis order woman seeketh; freedom, man. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Perhaps the grumbler will object on the ground that he considers p a vital commodity, much more important than q, and that therefore the production of p should be expanded and that of q restricted. If this is really the meaning of his criticism, he is at variance with the valuations of the consumers. He throws off his mask and shows his dictatorial aspirations. Production should not be directed by the wishes of the public but by his own despotic discretion. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

People have a peculiar pleasure in making converts, that is, in causing others to enjoy what they enjoy, thus finding their own likeness represented and reflected back to them. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The error in this conclusion may be most simply demonstrated by means of an actual example. Let us select for this purpose the monetary history of Austria, which Laughlin also uses as an illustration. From 1859 onwards the Austrian National Bank was released from the obligation to convert its notes on demand into silver, and nobody could tell when the State paper-money issued in 1866 would be redeemed, or even if it would be redeemed at all. It was not until the later 'nineties that the transition to metallic money was completed by the actual resumption of cash payments on the part of the Austro-Hungarian Bank. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The bureaucracy is what we all suffer from. ~ Prince Otto Von Bismarck

Most imitators attempt the inimitable. ~ Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

The place I was bound for on my latest pilgrimage was filled with living, first-hand memories of all the enchanted years that lie between two and eighteen. How enchanted those years are is made more and more clear to me the older I grow. There has been nothing in the least like them since; and though I have forgotten most of what happened six months ago, every incident, almost every day of those wonderful long years is perfectly distinct in my memory. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

On top of the world, or in the depths of despair. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Thank God when he oppresses you, and again when he releases you. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I think it's a very strange question that I have to defend myself. I don't feel that. You are all my guests, it's not the other way around, that's how I feel. ~ Lars Von Trier

Unlike the rationalism of the French Revolution, true liberalism has no quarrel with religion, and I can only deplore the militant and essentially illiberal antireligionism which animated so much of nineteenth-century Continental liberalism ... What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different sphere which ought not to be confused. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself
nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

News-hunters have great leisure, with little thought; much petty ambition to be considered intelligent, without any other pretension than being able to communicate what they have just learned. ~ Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

I, for my share, cannot understand," continued she, "how men have made themselves believe that God speaks to us through books and histories. The man to whom the universe does not reveal directly what relation it has to him, whose heart does not tell him what he owes to himself and others, that man will scarcely learn it out of books, which generally do little more than give our errors names. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe