Great Throughts Treasury
This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Oswald Spengler, fully Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler
German Historian and Philosopher known for his book, "The Decline of the West"
"Thinking in money generates money -- that is the secret of the world economy."
"There is not the slightest trace of evolution towards a race of greater utilitarian 'fitness' . . . Human life-form . . . originates in a sudden mutation (Wandlung) of which the 'whence,' 'how' and 'why' remain an impenetrable secret."
"The sword is victorious over money, the master-will subdues again the plunderer-will. . . A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a principle, and only one power that can confront money is left. Money is overthrown and abolished by blood. Life is alpha and omega . . . It is the fact of facts within the world-as-history."
"The wealth of birth in primitive populations is a natural phenomenon, the very existence of which no one thinks about, let alone its advantages or disadvantages. Where reasons for questioning the existence of life enter the human consciousness, life itself has already become questionable."
"This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on. This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on."
"To-day a democrat of the old school would demand, not freedom for the press, but freedom from the press; but mean-time the leaders have changed themselves into parvenus who have to secure their position vis-a-vis the masses."
"What we need is not freedom of the press, we need freedom from the press."
"When three liberals get together they form a new party; that is their idea of individualism. They never join a bowling club without introducing as part of the 'agenda' an 'amendment of the statutes."
"When the Englishman speaks of national wealth he means the number of millionaires in the country."
"We Germans will never produce another Goethe, but we may produce another Caesar."
"World-history is the history of the great Cultures, and peoples are but the symbolic forms and vessels in which the men of these Cultures fulfil their Destinies."