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What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history or acted on the principles deduced from it.
G.W.F. HEGEL, Philosophy of History
To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right
Life has a value only when it has something valuable as its object.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Lectures on the Philosophy of History
In the case of various kinds of knowledge, we find that what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, exercises, and even pastimes for children; and in this educational progress we can see the history of the world’s culture delineated in faint outline.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, The Phenomenology of Spirit
The soul is presupposed as a ready-made agent, which displays such features as its acts and utterances, from which we can learn what it is, what sort of faculties and powers it possesses -- all without being aware that the act and utterance of what the soul is really invests it with that character in our conception and makes it reach a higher stage of being than it explicitly had before.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
The beginning of religion, more precisely its content, is the concept of religion itself, that God is the absolute truth, the truth of all things, and subjectively that religion alone is the absolutely true knoweldge.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy must indeed recognize the possibility that the people rise to it, but must not lower itself to the people.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, attributed, Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy
What is reasonable is real; that which is real is reasonable.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Elements of the Philosophy of Right
Poetry is the universal art of the spirit which has become free in itself and which is not tied down for its realization to external sensuous material; instead, it launches out exclusively in the inner space and the inner time of ideas and feelings.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Introduction to Aesthetics
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, The Phenomenology of Spirit
The differences which obtain between classes, such as the ruled and the rulers, are, no doubt, essential to the notion of State-life, and are founded on reason, for they are caused by the inevitable articulation of the organic community, and assert themselves as such through the specific forms of occupation, disposition, modes of life, and general levels of education in all their branches. It is another matter, however, when these differences as they affect individuals are determined absolutely by the accident of birth, so that the individual man from the very start is not on account of any quality in himself, but solely through the accident of Nature, irrevocably relegated to a particular class or caste.... On general principles, no doubt, distinctions of class can be justified, but at the same time no individual should be wholly robbed of his right to determine as his choice may direct to which particular class he shall belong.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Hegel on Tragedy
History is not the soil of happiness. The periods of happiness are blank pages in it.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Lectures on the Philosophy of History
Because of its concrete content, sense-certainty immediately appears as the richest kind of knowledge, indeed a knowledge of infinite wealth for which no bounds can be found, either when we reach out into space and time in which it is dispersed, or when we take a bit of this wealth, and by division enter into it. Moreover, sense-certainty appears to be the truest knowledge ... but, in the event, this very certainty proves itself to be the most abstract and poorest truth. All that it says about what it knows is just that it is; and its truth contains nothing but the sheer being of the thing.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, The Phenomenology of Spirit
Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle rounded and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the philosophical Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium. The single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through the limits imposed by its special medium, and gives rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in this way resembles a circle of circles. The Idea appears in each single circle, but, at the same time, the whole Idea is constituted by the system of these peculiar phases, and each is a necessary member of the organisation.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
In the Soul is the awaking of Consciousness: Consciousness sets itself up as Reason, awaking at one bound to the sense of its rationality: and this Reason by its activity emancipates itself to objectivity and the consciousness of its intelligent unity.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
Impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there. The length of the journey has to be borne with, for every moment is necessary.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, The Phenomenology of Spirit
In history, we are concerned with what has been and what is; in philosophy, however, we are concerned not with what belongs exclusively to the past or to the future, but with that which is, both now and eternally — in short, with reason.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Lectures on the Philosophy of History
The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Lectures on the Philosophy of History
Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, attributed, Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy
Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Hegel's "Stammbuch"
The Church has consistently and justly refused to allow that reason might stand in opposition to faith, and yet be placed under subjection to it. The human spirit in its inmost nature is not something so divided up that two contradictory elements might subsist together in it. If discord has arisen between intellectual insight and religion, and is not overcome in knowledge, it leads to despair, which comes in the place of reconciliation. This despair is reconciliation carried out in a one-sided manner. The one side is cast away, the other alone held fast; but a man cannot win true peace in this way. The one alternative is, for the divided spirit to reject the demands of the intellect and try to return to simple religious feeling. To this, however, the spirit can only attain by doing violence to itself, for the independence of consciousness demands satisfaction, and will not be thrust aside by force; and to renounce independent thought, is not within the power of the healthy mind. Religious feeling becomes yearning hypocrisy, and retains the moment of non-satisfaction. The other alternative is a one-sided attitude of indifference toward religion, which is either left unquestioned and let alone, or is ultimately attacked and opposed. That is the course followed by shallow spirits.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Lectures on Philosophy of Religion
To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Lectures on the Philosophy of History
The man whom philosophy leaves cold, and the man whom real faith does not illuminate, may be assured that the fault lies in them, not in knowledge and faith. The former is still an alien to philosophy, the latter an alien to faith.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences
To make abstractions hold in reality is to destroy reality.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Lectures on the Philosophy of History
The life of God — the life which the mind apprehends and enjoys as it rises to the absolute unity of all things — may be described as a play of love with itself; but this idea sinks to an edifying truism, or even to a platitude, when it does not embrace in it the earnestness, the pain, the patience, and labor, involved in the negative aspect of things.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, The Phenomenology of Spirit
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