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Oswald Spengler

Oswald Spengler Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Oswald Spengler Quotes

“We have not chosen this time. We cannot help it if we are born as men of the early winter of full Civilization, instead of on the golden summit of a ripe Culture, in a Phidias or a Mozart time. Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our destiny, clearly, on our realizing that though we may lie to ourselves about it, we cannot evade it. He who does not acknowledge this in his heart, ceases to be counted among the men of his generation, and remains either a simpleton, a charlatan, or a pedant.”

IfsMenHeartMayDoeHelpingLyingCultureRealizingBornDestinySeeingGenerationsPositionHe ManDependsCivilizationRemainsWinterCeaseChosenGoldenAcknowledgeOur DestinySummitRipeCharlatansPedantsSimpletonsPhidias
Book:Form and actuality
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“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.”

MenWayMeanEndsFoundLostBornPathTakenDoorsOne ThingFrontsPositionGreatnessDutyDiedSoldierBonesPostsRescueHonorableCan NotDestinedWithout HopeEruptionThoroughbredsPompeiiRoman Soldiers
Book:Routledge Revivals: Man and Technics (1932): A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life
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“Long, long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.”

MenLongCountryDiesCitiesBloodWasteTownsGiantsStreamsDryMidstBoresLong AgoIncessantlyDevouring
Book:The Decline of the West...: Perspectives of world-history
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“Man makes history; woman is history. The reproduction of the species is feminine: it runs steadily and quietly through all species, animal or human, through all short-lived cultures. It is primary, unchanging, everlasting, maternal, plantlike, and cultureless. If we look back we find that it is synonymous with life itself.”

IfsMenHumansLooksRunningCultureAnimalSpeciesPrimariesFeminineEverlastingReproductionUnchangingShort Lived
Book:Aphorisms
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“Talk of world peace is heard today only among the white peoples, and not among the much more numerous coloured races. This is a perilous state of affairs. When individual thinkers and idealists talk of peace, as they have done since time immemorial, the effect is negligible. But when whole peoples become pacifistic it is a symptom of senility. Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. To adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence. As long as man continues to evolve, there will be wars.”

MenWorldLongWarStatesDoneWholeFactsTodayIndividualStrongWhiteRaceExistenceHeardConditionsEffectsPositionIdealsAffairContraryEvolveAbandonThinkerSymptomsIdealistPacifistTerminalSenility
Author:Oswald Spengler
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