Erst wägen, dann wagen. First weigh, then dare. The motto is associated with Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, the Prussian chief of staff. In 1891, the year of his death, a cast-iron wall relief of Moltke was made in the Harz with the words on it. The sources do not say whether Moltke coined the phrase.
quotes
A Teacher of Slow Reading
In the preface to Morgenröte, Daybreak, Friedrich Nietzsche calls himself ein Lehrer des langsamen Lesens, a teacher of slow reading. Philology, he writes, is a venerable art that asks one thing of its admirer above all. He calls it a goldsmith’s art and connoisseurship of the word. He ends with a request to his readers to learn to read him well.
Something to Show
Jürgen Klinsmann came to FC Bayern Munich in 2008 with new concepts and ideas. On 27 April 2009, before the end of his first season, the club let him go. Jupp Heynckes, who had coached Bayern before, took over for the last five matches. Uli Hoeneß, the club’s general manager, explained the choice: Wir brauchen jetzt jemanden, der schon etwas vorzuweisen hat. We now need someone who already has something to show. He added: Jedes Konzept liest sich prima auf dem Papier. Every concept reads well on paper.
Sayings About Masters and Apprentices
Lehrjahre sind keine Herrenjahre.
Apprentice years are not years as a gentleman. The years of training are hard, and the apprentice is not yet his own master. In 2024, a young carpenter from Thuringia who had become European champion told a newspaper: Lehrjahre sind keine Herrenjahre – dieser alte Spruch demotiviert junge Leute. This old saying discourages young people.
Es ist noch kein Meister vom Himmel gefallen.
No master has yet fallen from the sky.
Übung macht den Meister.
Practice makes the master.
Neue Besen kehren gut.
New brooms sweep well. A newcomer starts with great zeal. DWDS notes that the saying is sometimes ironic.
Earn It to Own It
In the scene Nacht, Night, at the start of Goethe’s Faust, Faust speaks two lines that Germans still quote: Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, / Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen. What you have inherited from your fathers, earn it in order to possess it. The next line reads: Was man nicht nützt, ist eine schwere Last. What one does not use is a heavy burden.
Who Comes Too Late
Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben. Life punishes whoever comes too late. Germans attribute the sentence to Mikhail Gorbachev, who visited East Berlin for the 40th anniversary of the GDR in October 1989. There is no recording of him saying it. On 6 October, the words a German news agency reporter heard were: Ich glaube, Gefahren lauern nur auf jene, die nicht auf das Leben reagieren. I believe dangers lie in wait only for those who do not react to life. On 7 October, his spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov told the press, in English, “Those who are late will be punished by life itself.” The agencies then put together the German sentence that the country remembers. Gorbachev later used the familiar version in his memoirs.
Two Famous Assurances
In spring 1986, Labor Minister Norbert Blüm pasted up a poster himself on the market square in Bonn. It read: Denn eins ist sicher – die Rente. Because one thing is certain: the pension. The short form Die Rente ist sicher became almost a proverb, and Blüm was much smiled at and criticized for it. On 1 July 1990, the day the West German mark came to East Germany, Chancellor Helmut Kohl said in a television address that the eastern states would schon bald wieder in blühende Landschaften be transformed, soon into flourishing landscapes again. In 2021, an analysis in t-online found the statutory pension surprisingly robust. It also wrote that with the poster, Blüm had secured himself a place in the collective memory of the republic.
Shake Off the Mildew
In the budget debate of 6 September 2023, Chancellor Olaf Scholz offered the sixteen state premiers and the opposition leader Friedrich Merz a Deutschland-Pakt, a pact for Germany. Its purpose, he said, was to den Mehltau aus Bürokratismus, Risikoscheu und Verzagtheit abschütteln, shake off the mildew of bureaucracy, fear of risk and timidity. He called for Tempo statt Stillstand, Handeln statt Aussitzen, speed instead of standstill, action instead of waiting things out. One of his examples was concrete: „Schneller“ heißt, dass alle 16 Länder bis Ende des Jahres Bauanträge auch digital annehmen. (Faster means that all sixteen states accept building applications digitally as well by the end of the year.)
We Ask About the Risks First
In May 2025, Germany created a new federal ministry for digital affairs and state modernization. Its minister is Karsten Wildberger, the former head of the electronics retailer MediaMarktSaturn. In a dpa interview in January 2026, he described the national habit: Wir stellen oft zuerst die Frage nach den Risiken. (We often ask about the risks first.) He said he wished Germany would rediscover the enthusiasm for the new and for technology that had always defined it. In the same interview he spoke about the coming digital ID on the phone. He said he would keep his physical ID card: Es ist immer gut, noch ein Backup zu haben. (It is always good to have a backup.)
What Moltke Actually Wrote
The line “No plan survives contact with the enemy” is usually credited to Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. He did not write it in that form. In his essay Ueber Strategie of 1871, Moltke wrote: Kein Operationsplan reicht mit einiger Sicherheit über das erste Zusammentreffen mit der feindlichen Hauptmacht hinaus. (No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main force.) The next sentence reads: Nur der Laie glaubt in dem Verlauf eines Feldzuges die konsequente Durchführung eines im voraus gefaßten in allen Einzelheiten überlegten und bis ans Ende festgehaltenen, ursprünglichen Gedankens zu erblicken. (Only the layman believes that in the course of a campaign he sees the consistent execution of an original idea, thought out in advance in every detail and held to the end.) Moltke saw strategy as a system of expedients. He gave his subordinate commanders wide freedom of action in carrying out their mission. The familiar English wording, “no plan survives contact with the enemy”, is found in 1961, attributed to Moltke, in Correlli Barnett’s book The Desert Generals.