Oswald Spengler Quotes
We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.
Spengler, Oswald. Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life. Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson, Alfred A. Knopf, 1932, p. 104.
Bassi was one of the unique military chaplains in history. Instead of just ministering to the men spiritually, he marched at the head of the Italian revolutionary Army and was wounded in combat. Although he never carried arms, he was executed along with those who did.
Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art and their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work, The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering all of world history. Spengler's model of history postulates that any culture is a superorganism with a limited and predictable lifespan.
