Frederick the Great

About Frederick the Great

Notable quotes

“I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people.”
— Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 37 from Frederick to Voltaire (June 1738)
“As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to maintain the existence of Nothing.”
— Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 221 from Frederick to Voltaire (1777-11-25)
“But France's powerful armies, and a very large number of fortresses, ensure that the French Sovereign will possess the throne forever, and they do not have anything to fear now concerning internal wars or their neighbors invading France.”
— Chapter IV
“(About Cesare Borgia) What cruelties were not the result of his? Who could count all his crimes? Such was the man that Machiavel prefers to all the great geniuses of his time, and to the heroes of antiquity, and of which he finds the life and action make a good example for those that fortune favors.”
— Chapter VII
“"My people and I," he said, "have come to an agreement which satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please."”
— Attributed by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Life of Frederick the Great (1882), pg 48.
“Je puis vous assurer, par mon expérience personnelle, que ce plaisir grec est peu agréable à cultiver.”
— Letter to his nephew, warning him against the vice of "pédérastie". From Les Matinées du Roi de Prusse. Quoted in Pisanus Fraxi, Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (1879), p. 411, note: "The authenticity of this work has been doubted, but M. Paul Lacroix has now swept away all doubt, and it must be acknowledged as being really from the pen of the great Frederick."

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.