Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spenglerwas a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West, published in 1918 and 1922, covering all of world history. Spengler's civilization model postulates that any civilization is a superorganism with a limited and predictable lifespan...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth29 May 1880
CountryGermany
wise clever men
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.
bears extensions
History is direction—but Nature is extension—ergo, everyone gets eaten by a bear.
world
All world-improvers are Socialists. And consequently there are no Classical world-improvers.
philosophy defence bottom
Philosophy, the love of Wisdom, is at the very bottom defence against the incomprehensible.
hero leader world
A resolute leader who collects ten thousand adventurers about him can do as he pleases. Were the whole world a single Imperium, it would thereby become merely the maximum conceivable field for the exploits of such conquering heroes.
christian grandmother theology
Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.
transition cosmic tension
Tension without cosmic pulsation to animate it is the transition to nothingness
leader facts movement
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.
drama views media
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
honor enemy doe
One does not reflect on a point of honor - that is already dishonor. To submit to insult, to forget a humiliation, to quail before an enemy - all these are signs of a life become worthless and superfluous.
eye men suffering
The common man wants nothing of life but health, longevity, amusement, comfort-“happiness.” He who does not despise this should turn his eyes from world history, for it contains nothing of the sort. The best that history has created is great suffering.
army play soldier
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.
war long soul
If few can stand a long war without deterioration of soul, none can stand a long peace.
country land cities
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.