Frederick the Great Short Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

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God is always with the strongest battalions.

Frederick the Great
The prince is the first servant of his state.

Frederick the Great
By push of bayonets, no firing till you see the whites of their eyes.

Frederick the Great
Drive out prejudices through the door, and they will return through the window.

Frederick the Great
Politics consists more in profiting from favorable circumstances than preparing them in advance.

Frederick the Great
What greater service could I have performed for German literature than that I didn't bother with it?

Frederick the Great
It is a fact that princes who try to raise other princes with violence, end up destroying themselves.

Frederick the Great
A man with his heart in his profession imagines and finds resources where the worthless and lazy despair.

Frederick the Great
For every state, from the smallest to the largest, the principle of enlargement is the fundamental law of life.

Frederick the Great
Philosophers should be the teachers of the world and the teachers of princes. They must think logically and we must act logically.

Frederick the Great
A single Voltaire will do more honor to France than a thousand pedants, a thousand false wits, a thousand great men of inferior order.

Frederick the Great
The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices.

Frederick the Great
Always presume that the enemy has dangerous designs and always be forehanded with the remedy. But do not let these calculations make your timid.

Frederick the Great
Great advantage is drawn from knowledge of your adversary, and when you know the measure of his intelligence and character, you can use it to play on his weakness.

Frederick the Great
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.

Frederick the Great
Do not neglect the principles of foresight and know that often, puffed up with success, armies have lost the fruit of their heroism through a feeling of false security.

Frederick the Great
Is it not true that the doctrine of attraction and gravity has done nothing but astonish our imagination? Is it not true that all the chemical discoveries have done only the same?

Frederick the Great
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.

Frederick the Great
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.

Frederick the Great