Quotessence
Home / Authors / Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler

Oswald Spengler Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldMenFactsIfsWarIdealsMeanWantCitiesCountryCultureDesireFormHumansLastsMayPeoplePositionRaceSoul

Famous Oswald Spengler Quotes

“The question of whether world peace will ever be possible can only be answered by someone familiar with world history. To be familiar with world history means, however, to know human beings as they have been and always will be. There is a vast difference, which most people will never comprehend, between viewing future history as it will be and viewing it as one might like it to be. Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals.”

PeopleKnowsWorldHumansMeanHas BeensWarFactsMightDesireDifferencesHuman BeingsIdealsPaidFamiliarWorld HistoryHeed
Author:Oswald Spengler
Create image

“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
Create image

“In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.”

PeopleWorldCountryMatterWholeFactsFormBornCitiesTypeHighestMassWhole LifeCleverGentlemanSoilRegionsBroadsCollectingFluidMatter Of FactCountrymenNomadDwellersContemptuousTrue People
Book:The decline of the West
Create image

“It is the Late city that first defies the land, contradicts Nature in the lines of its silhouette, denies all Nature. It wants to be something different from and higher than Nature. These high-pitched gables, these Baroque cupolas, spires, and pinnacles, neither are, nor desire to be, related with anything in Nature. And then begins the gigantic megalopolis, the city-as-world, which suffers nothing beside itself and sets about annihilating the country picture.”

WorldWantFirstsDifferentCountryDesireSufferingLinesCitiesLandHigherLateDenyRelatedPinnacleSilhouettesBaroqueSpires
Book:The decline of the West
Create image