von Bismarch: "The position of Prussia in Germany will not be determined by its Liberalism, but by its power."

von Bismarch: “Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood.”

Wikipedia: Bismarck was strong-willed, outspoken, and overbearing, but he could also be polite, charming, and witty.

Hektoen International: A political genius and astute negotiator, Bismarck was often a bully, true to his famous pronouncement that the great questions of the day would be decided not by speeches and resolutions of the majorities but by iron and blood.

Hektoen International: A complex personality whose character had been shaped by an ambitious but loveless mother, he was a reservoir of explosive tendencies, wild in his youth, a religious convert in middle age, a bully easily moved to tears, aristocratic in outlook, conservative, intolerant, anti-semite, and illiberal.

Hektoen International: Like his mother he suffered from hypochondria, and in time he grew into a colossus weighing 234 pounds (that he had always trouble in shedding), addicted to political power, driven by a deeply held desire to dominate.

Hektoen International: With his dread of boredom dominant, privately lonely and depressed, he resembled a massive engine with a steam boiler at highest pressure. From this bottomless boredom and depression, he had found relief in his marriage and in total immersion in politics.

Hektoen International: For one brought up with the tasteless and indigestible food of backwater Prussia, Bismarck had developed a liking for good food and exquisite wine. His diet indeed was extraordinary.

Hektoen International: He ate a great deal of caviar to promote thirst, since he believed he could sleep only after drinking a goodly amount of beer. He had been a chain smoker of cigarettes from morning to night; later he switched to cigars.

Hektoen International: For many years he had two physicians taking care of him but thought they were useless, making mountains out of molehills, their prescriptions worthless, and expecting them to restore his health without having him change his lifestyle. One of the doctors who attended him described him “as hysterical as a woman.”

Ohio University: When revolutions swept across Europe and reached Berlin the following year, his first impulse was to arm the peasants of his estate in defense of King and country. But two weeks later, in his first speech to the United Diet, he noted: " the past is buried...no human power can bring it back to life." Here was a clear expression of the "political realism" with which his name later became synonymous and which set him apart from his political friends of the reactionary Gerlach group: while they were principled and tradition-bound, Bismarck was pragmatic. What mattered to him were concrete interests and the power to defend or to satisfy them.

Ohio University: More clearly than his allies, however, Bismarck saw liberalism as an expression of the political, economic, and social interests of the propertied urban class associated with industrialization. He countered it by raising the material interests of the Junkers to the level of patriotic duty, justifying aristocratic privileges as a necessary basis for their continued service to the state which he considered the only real guarantee of the state's "lasting prosperity and power."

Ohio University: In the pursuit of his goals, Bismarck also became a modern politician who, like his opponents, began to mobilize popular support for his cause. In press campaigns, association meetings, and parliamentary speeches he appealed to the aspirations of peasants, craftsmen, and shopkeepers as if they were identical to the interests of his Junker constituents.

Ohio University: In his responses to the so-called German question raised during the revolution, Bismarck developed ideas and arguments which also foreshadowed his later policies and actions. He never left anyone in doubt that he was a Prussian patriot, not a German nationalist. He rejected the Frankfurt Assembly's plan for unification because it would absorb Prussia into Germany; and he opposed the Radowitz plan because it would destroy the independence of the Prussian king.

Ohio University: Although he had earlier urged a Prussian policy of aggrandizement and primacy in Germany, Bismarck argued against a war and for cooperation with Austria on the basis of parity. Only self-interest, he explained, makes war a worthy cause for a major state.