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Frederick the Great Quotes

Total quotes: 11
“Christianity…is an old metaphysical fiction, stuffed with fables, contradictions and absurdities: it was spawned in the fevered imagination of the Orientals, and then spread to our Europe, where some fanatics espoused it, where some intriguers pretended to be convinced by it and where some imbeciles actually believed it. ”
— Frederick the Great, Civilization: The West and the Rest
Tagged: Christianity, Anti-Christian, Orientals, Europe, Fanatics, Imbeciles, Fables, Contradictions
“We have too many Jews in the towns. They are needed on the Polish border because in these areas Hebrews alone perform trade. As soon as you get away from the frontier, the Jews become a disadvantage, they form cliques, they deal in contraband and get up to all manner of rascally tricks which are detrimental to Christian burghers and merchants. I have never persecuted anyone from this or any other sect; I think, however, it would be prudent to pay attention, so that their numbers do not increase.”
— Frederick the Great, Frederick the Great: A Life in Deed and Letters
Tagged: Jews, Anti-Semitism, Christians
“Books make up no small part of human happiness.”
— Frederick the Great
Tagged: Books, Reading, Happiness, Youth
“If it is bad to debase the innocence of a private individual, whose influence on the affairs of the world is minimal, it is much more to pervert some prince who must control his people, administer justice, and set an example for their subjects;””
— Frederick the Great, The Anti Machiavel of Frederick the Great
Tagged: Innocence, Debase, Private Individual, Justice, Princes
“Compare Holland with Russia; you see only marshy and sterile islands in the former, which rise from the center of the ocean: a small republic which is only 48 miles length by 40 wide. But this small body is the very nerve-center of the region: immense people live in it, and these industrious people are both powerful and rich. They shook the yoke of the Spanish domination, which was then the most formidable monarchy of Europe. The trade of this republic extends to the ends of the world; and new trade appears almost immediately; it can maintain in times of war an army fifty thousand men, without counting a many and well maintained fleet.””
— Frederick the Great, The Anti Machiavel of Frederick the Great
Tagged: Holland, Russia, Spanish Domination, Europe
“It is a fact that princes who try to raise other princes with violence, end up destroying themselves.”
— Frederick the Great, The Anti Machiavel of Frederick the Great
Tagged: Princes, Violence, Self-Destruction
“Machiavel's The Prince is to ethics what the work of Spinoza is to faith. Spinoza sapped the fundamentals of faith, and drained the spirit of religion; Machiavel corrupted policy, and undertook to destroy the precepts of healthy morals: the errors of the first were only errors of speculation, but those of the other had a practical thrust....I always have regarded The Prince as one of the most dangerous works which were spread in the world; it is a book which falls naturally into the hands of princes, and of those who have a taste for policy....There is a real injustice in concluding that the rotten apples are representative of all of them.”
— Frederick the Great, The Anti Machiavel of Frederick the Great
Tagged: Machiavelli, The Prince, Corruption
“It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country as a consequence. Everybody is using coffee; this must be prevented. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were both his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war.”
— Frederick the Great
Tagged: Coffee, Alcohol, Beer, Soldiers
“Neither antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God.”
— Frederick the Great
Tagged: Christianity, Catholicism, Eucharist, Holy Communion
“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
Tagged: Voltaire, France, Pedants, False Wits
“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
Tagged: Christianity, Anti-Christianity, Antiquity, Absurd, Credulity
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