Thomas Johnson

“The KiKongo language, spoken around the Congo River’s mouth, is one of the African tongues whose traces linguists have found in the Gullah dialect spoken by black Americans today on the coastal islands of South Carolina and Georgia.”
― Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost

“The German Empire did not fall to visions of democracy or socialism. Neither was it brought down by the German people or the Allies. The system fell because it was flawed from the outset, built on foundations of war, not fraternity. The maintenance of national unity required a diet of conflict, the constant hunger for which grew until catastrophe loomed in 1914. The German Empire had come full circle. It ended where it had started: in blood and iron.”
― Katja Hoyer, Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918

“As Bismarck describes in the Kissingen Dictation, this incident proved once and for all that there was absolutely no diplomatic room for Germany to expand beyond its current reaches. The nightmare of coalitions, and the attendant two-front war, would mean the destruction of the Reich and no expansion of territory was worth that risk. If only Wilhelm II had read and understood the old chancellor’s words.”
― Katja Hoyer, Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918

“In 1875, civil marriages were introduced as the only legal form. A couple could still get married in a church but only after they had had a state ceremony to make the marriage official in law. This shows very clearly that the Kulturkampf was not a mere measure to restrict Catholic political activity, but it was indeed a battle over spiritual and moral authority in Germany.”
― Katja Hoyer, Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918