Lutherans

"You are in the first place a Christian: I am in the first place a historian. There is a gulf between us."

"Sagacity in judging the value of testimony is his only supreme quality."

"While an admirable critic of sources, Niebuhr read into his version of Roman history a variety of moral and philosophical views unwarranted by the existing evidence... Ranke, on the other hand, determined to hold strictly to the facts of history, to preach no sermon, to point no moral, to adorn no tale, but to tell the simple historic truth. His sole ambition was to narrate things as they really were "wie es eigentlich gewesen". Truth and objectivity were Ranke's highest aims. In his view, history is not for entertainment or edification, but for instruction... He did not believe in the historian's province to point out divine providence in human history."

"No one else has been able to speak with equal authority on the history of so many nations, Grote wrote nothing on the history of Rome, Mommsen has written nothing on the history of Greece. Ranke was equally at home in the Germany of the Reformation, in the France of Louis XIV., and in the England of Charles I. and Cromwell."

"Ranke has not only written a larger number of mostly excellent books than any man that ever lived, but he has taken pains from the first to explain how the thing is done. He attained a position unparalleled in literature, less by the display of extraordinary faculties than by perfect mastery of the secret of his craft, and that secret he has always made it his business to impart. For his most eminent predecessors, history was applied politics, fluid law, religion exemplified, or the school of patriotism. Ranke was the first German to pursue it for no purpose but its own. He tried to make the generality of educated men understand how it came about that the world of the fifteenth century was changed into the Europe of the nineteenth. His own definite persuasions regarding church and king were not suffered to permeate his books. It was meritorious in Böckh, but not heroic, to contain his feelings about the Attic treasure and the setting of Arcturus; but Ranke was concerned with all the materials of abiding conflict, with every cause for which he cared and men are willing to kill or die."

"What one hears in Ranke. The whisper of statecraft. Not the tramp of democracy's earthquake feet. Not the dull roar of surging opinion."

"Ranke is cold and unenthusiastic; and, in judging individuals, it is well to be cold and unenthusiastic. But is there no room for warmth of feeling in recounting the efforts and the struggles of the race? Is it not possible to do for history what Darwin has done for science? Ranke, at all events, did not do it. He knew of the influence upon individuals of great waves of feeling and opinion; but he does not seek for the law of human progress which underlies them. He does not rejoice in that progress, or grieve at failure. Hence, perhaps, in part his preference for writing the history of many nations during the same period, rather than the history of one nation consecutively. To say this, however, is only to say that there is no finality in scientific progress. Whatever shape the histories of the future may take, they will assuredly be built on the foundations which Ranke has laid down with unerring hand."

"The lectures of Ranke, the most eminent of German historians, I could not follow. He had a habit of becoming so absorbed in his subject, as to slide down in his chair, hold his finger up toward the ceiling, and then, with his eye fastened on the tip of it, to go mumbling through a kind of rhapsody, which most of my German fellow-students confessed they could not understand. It was a comical sight: half a dozen students crowding around his desk, listening as priests might listen to the sibyl on her tripod, the other students being scattered through the room, in various stages of discouragement."

"Though standards vary, greatness remains; indeed it is the true mark of greatness that it can survive changing standards. Shakespeare was great to Johnson; great to Coleridge; is great to us. Ranke was a historian of the same grandeur – great to his contemporaries, still great after the passage of a century; if not the greatest of historians, securely within the first half-dozen. Great as a scholar, great as a master of narrative, Ranke has the special claim of having achieved something more than his work; he founded a school, the school of scientific historians, which has dominated all historical thinking since his time, even when in reaction against it."

"[T]he chief criticism against Ranke and the Ranke school of “objective” and “scientific” history is its total unphilosophicalness. Far from being scientific, Ranke was profoundly biassed; we have seen that he observed God’s handiwork in all history; he made no attempt at formulating a genuine philosophy or psychology."

"Ranke developed no further the implications of his theory than to ensure a reproduction of a living past, as perfect as with the sources at his disposal and the political instincts of his time it was possible to secure... [Ranke was] concrete, definite, searching for minute details, maintaining his own objectivity by insisting upon the subjectivity of the materials he handles."

"Beyond question even Von Ranke, the leading exponent of colorless history, did not succeed in being wholly objective; much of his work was unconsciously written from the standpoint of the conservative reaction of his time in Prussia."

"Leopold von Ranke is not only beyond all comparison the greatest historical scholar alive, but one of the very greatest historians that ever lived. Unrivalled stores of knowledge, depth of research, intimate acquaintance with the most recondite sources, have been, in his case, supplemented by everything which could be conferred by a long life, continuous study, close association with the great political actors and thinkers of the greatest part of the most eventful century of the world's history."

"Ranke did not stop at concrete description but attempted to pierce the deepest and most mysterious movements of life."

"[T]he history of German historical thought since Ranke's time has to a large extent been nothing but the spiritual and philosophical (weltanschauliche) debate about his legacy."

"He [Hitler] had learned much from Leon Trotzky, whose slogan of the permanent revolution he now adopted: ‘The German Revolution will not be concluded until the whole of the German nation is given a new form, a new organization, and a new structure.’"

"The twenty-six-year-old Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler youth, who could boast of standing close to Hitler, declared bluntly in those revolutionary June weeks: ‘A socialist and anti-capitalist attitude is the most salient characteristic of the Young National Socialist Germany.’"

"At length a force of three million S.A. men was pushing on behind him [Röhm], and God knew whither they were pushing. There were large numbers of Communists and Social Democrats among them; many of the storm troopers were called ‘beefsteaks—brown and red within. Jest were retailed such as the following: one S.A. man says to another: ‘In our storm troop there are three Nazis, but we shall soon have spewed them out."

"The bourgeois, even the Nationalist Press, began to take fright and talk of Bolshevism and Hitler himself boasted: ‘In our movement the two extremes come together: the Communists from the Left and the officers and students from the Right. These two have always been the most active elements, and it was the greatest crime that they used to oppose each other in street fights.’… Our party has already succeeded in uniting these two utter extremes within the ranks of our storm troops. They will form the core of the great German liberation movement, in which all without distinction will stand together when the day comes to say: The Nation arises, the storm is breaking!’"

"Karl Marx was himself an anti-Semite: that is to say, an opponent of bourgeois Jewry. Inversely, most Jews are anti-Marxist."

"Röhm coined the slogan that there must be ‘second revolution’, this time, not against the Left, but against the Right; in his diary Goebbels agreed with him. On April 18 he maintained that this second revolution was being discussed ‘everywhere among the people’; in reality, he said, this only meant that first one was not yet ended. ‘Now we shall soon have to settle with the reaction. The revolution must nowhere call a halt."

"Hitler expressed it in a form which made it intelligible to the masses. ‘We do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany.’"

"The Nazi party had been too hasty in incorporating the word ‘Socialist’ in its title, Hitler indeed wished it to be ‘Social Revolutionary.’"

"The great modern mass-parties, first the foremost the Fascists, have re-discovered an old historical truth which seemed long since buried: that men often and masses almost always pay service not to their interests but to their illusions."

"They could resign themselves to the Republic no less than the big industrialists, who did not favour the various abortive revolts and did not, for the most part, encourage National-Socialism."

"At Munich, at the time of the Soviet Republic, he [Hitler] interceded with his comrades on behalf of the Social-Democratic Government and, in heated discussions, espoused the cause of Social Democracy against that of the Communists."

"Before the war [World War I] the anti-Semitic movement was of no political importance in Germany."

"War is elevating, because the individual disappears before the great conception of the state…. What a perversion of morality to wish to abolish heroism among men!"

"Those who preach the nonsense of eternal peace do not understand Aryan national life."

"All treaties between nations are valid only with the reservation clause: rebus sic stantibus. They do not pledge a State for ever."

"Martial force is the basis of all political virtues; in the rich treasure of Germany's glories the Prussian military glory is a jewel as precious, as loyally acquired as the masterpieces of our poets and our thinkers; the sacred character of the allegiance to the flag is a witness to the moral force of our people. Therefore let our Liberalism return to those ancient German convictions."

"...One thing alone can drive us, against our will, beyond these modest desires. If the next French attack against the German Empire found the Dutch among the enemy faction, at that exact moment Holland, by her senseless mistrust, would herself be precipitated into her ruin. Then, and only then, would it be necessary to attempt to put an end once and for all to the millenary struggle over the ruins of ancient Lotharingia, and once more to compel the countries of the Lower Rhine perforce to rejoin the great people whom they abandoned long ago. Holland holds in her hands the means of averting, by a just and fearless policy, these interminable conflagrations. The majestic progress of German affairs, the unity of our Empire from the North Sea to Lake Constance, the complete organisation of this unity are not to be impeded by the outcries of small peoples who cannot forget the splendour of past days."

"Our military organisation remains a glorious manifestation of German political idealism; without admitting the fact, all our neighbours regret that they have not been able, some because of the inadequacy of their culture, others because of their extreme individualism, to imitate these institutions with complete success."

"God will see to it that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race."

"Among the workers there is spreading a theory of the absolute blessedness of peace, which is a scandal to the intelligence and moral energy of our age; a hotch-potch of phrases, so clear that everybody reposts them, and so miserable that every man who is a man throws them overboard at once when the majesty of war arises in bodily form before the people."

"The conquest of lands beyond the Atlantic is now the first aim of the European fleets. For, as the aim of human civilisation is the aristocracy of the white race over the whole globe, the importance of any nation will in the end be determined by the share it has in the domination of the transatlantic world. Hence the Fleet becomes more and more important in our time. [...] We must and will have our share in the control of the globe by the white race."

"The enlargement of Prussian power is little by little becoming a demand of justice."

"A thousand touching traits testify to the sacred power of the love which a righteous war awakes in noble nations."

"It has been thought, correctly and nicely, that everyone who is in peril will be helped. Practically this is implemented in the way that everyone who can say the word "asylum" is allowed to enter Europe and Finland, that word creates a subjective right to cross the border. Even for no proper reason, one gets a full investigation that lasts years, and if the preconditions for an asylum are not met, one can avoid coercive measures and thus stay in the country which he entered wrongly."

"One may oppose immigration. It is an opinion of one's own. But questioning the dignity of an immigrant is unacceptable. (...) I have not seen that these people [the leaders of the Finns Party] who have been convicted exactly of insulting dignity would have shown efficient regretting."

"The masks have now been taken off, showing only the face of war."

"Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay"

"Do we have to let every tree stay up and rot in the way that all our forests will turn into impassable thickets that are nicely called virgin forests? And just in order to ensure that every furniture beetle and cockroach can live a diverse and happy life. We the Finns are close to nature but why would we conserve so much that we run out of bread?"

"The surprise was that he took it so calmly"

"I can naturally not state the positions of Sweden, but according to my understanding our approaches are quite similar."

"In Finland, an amendment of the criminal code came into force this year. It expands and makes stricter the punishable scope of terrorism crimes. I also want to stress that when Finland respects the international human rights principles, and the laws that have been derived from them, it is in no way in contradiction with effective counter-terrorism measures."

"Finland condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and works actively to prevent it. Finland’s approach and deeds in fighting terrorism are already now fully aligned with the general line of NATO countries, also regarding the terrorism Turkey is facing. Also in this respect, the conditions of our membership are met."

"On our official visit to Turkey in 2015, together with my spouse, we could at close range follow the aftermath of an attack in Ankara; then we wanted to show our compassion to the loved ones of the victims and to condemn the act."

"The dialogue with Turkey on this situation needs to continue."

"Turkey’s concern over terrorism needs to be taken seriously. A large amount of Turkish people, ordinary citizens, have lost their lives in terrorist attacks."