The Decline of the West, Vol 2 Quotes

“What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery(the media) that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“Tension without cosmic pulsation to animate it is the transition to nothingness”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“Let a man be either a hero or a saint. In between lies, not wisdom, but banality.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“Can criticism then, as criticism, solve the great questions, or can it merely pose them? At the beginning of knowledge we believe the former. But the more we know, the more certain we become of the latter. So long as we hope, we call the secret a problem.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West - Volume 2: Perspectives of World History

“The man makes History, the woman is History.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“Every man is his own priest” is a conviction to which men could win through, but only as that pet of the priesthood which involves duties, not as to that which possesses power. No man confessed himself with the inward certainty of absolution.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“Woman is strong and wholly what she is, and she experiences the Man and the sons only in relation to herself and her ordained role. In the masculine being, on the contrary, there is a certain contradiction; he is this man, and he is something else besides, which woman neither understands nor admits, which she feels as robbery and violence upon that which to her is holiest. This secret and fundamental war of the sexes has gone on ever since there were sexes, and will continue - silent, bitter, unforgiving, pitiless - while they continue.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“The understanding of causes sets free. Belief in the linkages discovered compels the world-fear to retreat. God is man's refuge from the Destiny which  he can feel and livingly experience, but not think on, or figure, or name.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“If I call man a beast of prey, which do I insult: man or beast? For remember, the larger beasts of prey are noble creatures, perfect of their kind, and without the hypocrisy of human moral due to weakness.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“Can criticism the, as criticism, solve the great questions, or can it merely pose them? At the beginning of knowledge we believe the former. But the more we know, the more certain we become of the latter. So long as we hope, we call the secret a problem.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“Heute leben wir so widerstandslos unter der Wirkung dieser geistigen Artillerie, dass kaum jemand den inneren Abstand gewinnt, um sich das Ungeheuerliche dieses Schauspiels klarzumachen. Der Wille zur Macht in rein demokratischer Verkleidung hat sein Meisterstück damit vollendet, dass dem Freiheitsgefühl der Objekte mit der vollkommensten Knechtung, die es je gegeben hat, sogar noch geschmeichelt wird.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History