The Golden Maze Quotes

“Sudetendeutsche spoke German at home and at work, read German books and newspapers, and sent their children to German schools. For centuries, they had been ruled by a German-speaking monarchy in Vienna, until they woke up one day in 1918 to find themselves a minority in a new nation, governed from Prague by Czechs.”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze: A biography of Prague

“arguably, the greatest ruler the Habsburg clan ever produced. When she received the crown of Bohemia, she became the one and only woman, other than the legendary Libussa, ever to rule Bohemia.”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze: A biography of Prague

“named Radbot of Klettgau built a castle named Habsburg in modern-day Switzerland. Over time, his descendants took on the name of the fortress.”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze: A biography of Prague

“In 1241, the king rode out with his knights to aid Henry II of Silesia in his struggle against the invading Mongol army, the Golden Horde of Batu Khan, which had devastated eastern Europe.”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze: A biography of Prague

“The Bohemians, Cosmas wrote, were a tribe of Slavs from beyond the Tatra Mountains, who took their name from their leader, a chieftain named Bohemus.”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze: A biography of Prague

“Havel was a Bohemian in every sense of the word: a writer of sharp absurdist dramas and a lover of psychedelic rock and roll. As”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze: A biography of Prague

“Is there anywhere outside the hotel I can do this?’ ‘You think I spend my days finding out such things for your benefit?”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze: A biography of Prague

“The truth prevails, but it’s hard work’ - Jan Masaryk, Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, found dead in 1948 in the courtyard below his bathroom window”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze

“It was my belief that the truth would prevail, but I did not expect it to prevail unaided’ - Edvard Benes, 2nd President of Czechoslovakia, exiled after the Nazi occupation”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze

“The truth will prevail’ - Jan Hus, 15th century Bohemian religious reformer, burnt at the stake”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze

“Kepler died in Regenesburg on 15 November 1630, but the city’s cemetery was later destroyed by marauding soldiers and his bones were scattered. All we have left of his grave are the words he wrote for the inscription. It serves well enough as an epitaph for the whole Rudolfine era: ‘I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure.; Skybound was the mind, earthbound the body rests”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze

“Regensburg”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze: A biography of Prague

“The Slavs, he wrote, ‘are all exceptionally tall and stalwart men . . . they are not ruled by one man, but they have lived from of old under a democracy, and consequently everything which involves their welfare, whether for good or for ill, is referred to the people’.2”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze: A biography of Prague

“The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze: A biography of Prague

“In media interviews, we made up preposterous lies and were amazed to see them printed uncritically in The Times and City Limits. Sometimes”
― Richard Fidler, The Golden Maze: A biography of Prague