Quotes from Oswald Spengler

This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.

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

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

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

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

There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.

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

Every action alters the soul of the doer.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

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

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

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.

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

The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play.

We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.

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

Optimism is cowardice .

To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery(the media) that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed