Talk:Frederick II of Prussia

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In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel, and red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Frederic the Great", Biographcal Essays (1857); to create: Seven Years' War

Before I endorse this sentence, I am curious to hear of the measures you want to employ for making a simple soldier pay 2000 Taler.
- Bevor ich das gegenwärtige Urteil bestätige, bin Ich doch neugierig, die Mittel zu wissen, deren man sich bedienen will, einen Soldaten 2000 Taler bezahlen zu lassen.
- Note on a verdict against a soldier who was sentenced to a fine of 2000 thaler for smuggling.

I am the first servant of my state.
- Ich bin der erste Diener meines Staates.

Religions must all be tolerated and the state has to keep an eye that none of them shall derogate the other, because here everyone must find his salvation in his own way.
- Die Religionen müssen alle toleriert werden und der Fiscal muß nur das Auge darauf haben, dass Keine der Andern abruch tue, denn hier muß ein jeder nach seiner Fasson selig werden.
- Reply on the question of his secretaries whether Catholic schools should be abolished in Protestant Prussia.

That the arrested man has committed blasphemy is a proof that he does not know God. That he has slandered me, I pardon him. But for his insulting of an honorable member of the council, he shall be punished as an example and be sent to Spandau prison for half an hour.
- Dass der Arrestat Gott gelästert hat, ist ein Beweis, dass er ihn nicht kennt. Daß er mich gelästert hat, vergebe ich ihm; daß er aber einen edlen Rat gelästert hat, dafür soll er exemplarisch bestraft werden und auf eine halbe Stunde nach Spandau kommen.
- Answering a question by a mayor how to punish a man that had committed blasphemy and insulted the king and the City Council.

The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices.

The monarch is a perpetual sentinel, who must watch... enemies of the state... it is not that he should remain the shadow of authority, but that he should fulfill [his] duties.

The priest will stay. If he does not want to get up with the others on Judgement Day, he may well keep resting on his back.
- Der Pfarrer bleibt. Wenn er am Jüngsten Tag nicht mit aufstehen will, kann er ruhig liegen bleiben.
- Answer to the request of a parish in Pomerania to send a new priest, as the present one had ventured to deny the resurrection on Judgement Day.

Alle Religionen sind gleich und gut, wenn nur die Leute, die sie praktizeren, ehrliche Leute sind; und wenn Türken und Heiden kämen und wollten das Lande pöpulieren, so wollen wir ihnen Moscheen und Kirchen bauen.
- All Religions are equal and good, if only the people that practice them are honest people; and if Turks and heathens came and wanted to live here in this country, we would build them mosques and churches.
- 1740 note on a question whether a Catholic was allowed the citizenship of a Prussian city.

Kerls, wollt ihr ewig leben?
- Dogs, would you live forever?
- Variation: Rogues, would you live forever? (Ihr Racke, wollen sie ewig leben?)
- Variation: Rascals, Do you want to life forever? (Kerls, wollt ihr denn ewig leben?)
- Addressing retreating Prussians at the Battle of Kolin (1757-06-18)

"I was young, had a big army, a full treasury, and I wanted to see my name in the newspapers"

W. F. H. King (ed.) Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), nos. 1095, 2832

In meinem Staate kann jeder nach seiner Façon selig werden.
- In my kingdom every one can go to heaven after his own fashion.
- German quoted in Georg Büchmann, Geflügelte Worte, 19th ed. (1898), p. 518. Only a month after his accession, 22 June 1740, Frederick penned a memorandum on the education of the children of his Catholic soldiers. The king was all in favour of toleration and religious liberty, his Note declaring that hier mus ein jeder nach seiner Fasson selich werden, which Büchmann puts into the popular form given above. He cites Busching's Charakter Friedrichs II as authority, but without further particulars, and adds an apposite parallel in French history from the mouth of Henry IV: Plut à Dieu... que vous fussiez si prudent que de laisser à chacun gagner Paradis comme il l'entend. Cf. also Voltaire, Letters concerning the English Nation (1733), 5: "An Englishman, as one to whom liberty is natural, may go to heaven his own way."

Un prince est le premier serviteur et le premier magistrat de l'État.
- A prince is the first servant and the first magistrate of the State.
- French quoted in Mémoires de Brandebourg (Œuvres, ed. Preuss., vol. 1, p. 123). See Büchmann, 19th ed. (1898), pp. 520–1, who records no less than six different places in which Frederick enunciated this maxim, and each time in the French, and not the German language.
- In 1717 (25 March) Massillon, preaching before Louis XV, reminded the nine-year-old king: Ce n'est pas le souverain, c'est la loi, Sire, qui doit régner sur les peuples Vous n'en êtes que le ministre et le premier dépositaire.—"It is not the sovereign, but the law, that should be supreme over nations. You are only the law's minister, and its chief trustee." Suetonius (Tiberius 29) makes Tiberius openly declare in the senate, that "a good and serviceable prince ought to be the servant both of the senate and of the whole body of citizens" (bonum et salutarem principem... senatui servire debere, et universis civibus)