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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

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Because Of Its Concrete

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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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.

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A Man Who Has Work That Suits Him And A Wife, Whom He Loves, Has Squared His Accounts With Life.

The People Will Learn To Feel The Dignity Of Man. They Will Not Merely Demand Their Rights, Which Have Been Trampled In The Dust, But Themselves Will Take Them - Make Them Their Own.

Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, Are Wont To Be Emphatically Commended To The Teaching Which Experience Offers In History. But What Experience And History Teach Is This - That People And Governments Never Have Learned Anything From History, Or Acted On Principles Deduced From It. Each Period Is Involved In Such Peculiar Circumstances, Exhibits A Condition Of Things So Strictly Idiosyncratic, That Its Conduct Must Be Regulated By Considerations Connected With Itself, And Itself Alone.

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We Learn From History That We Do Not Learn From History

Life Has Value Only When It Has Something Valuable As Its Object.

What History Teaches Us Is That Neither Nations Nor Governments Ever Learn Anything From It.

To Be Independent Of Public Opinion Is The First Formal Condition Of Achieving Anything Great Or Rational Whether In Life Or In Science. Great Achievement Is Assured, However, Of Subsequent Recognition And Grateful Acceptance By Public Opinion, Which In Due Course Will Make It One Of Its Own Prejudices

The Heart Is Everywhere, And Each Part Of The Organism Is Only The Specialized Force Of The Heart Itself.

History As The Slaughter-bench

Once The State Has Been Founded, There Can No Longer Be Any Heroes. They Come On The Scene Only In Uncivilized Conditions.

Every Philosophy Is Complete In Itself And, Like A Genuine Work Of Art, Contains The Totality. Just As The Works Of Apelles And Sophocles, If Raphael And Shakespeare Had Known Them, Should Not Have Appeared To Them As Mere Preliminary Exercises For Their Own Work, But Rather As A Kindred Force Of The Spirit, So, Too Reason Cannot Find In Its Own Earlier Forms Mere Useful Preliminary Exercises For Itself.

To Him Who Looks At The World Rationally The World Looks Rationally Back.

People Who Are Too Fastidious Towards The Finite Never Reach Actuality, But Linger In Abstraction, And Their Light Dies Away.

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.

Everything That From Eternity Has Happened In Heaven And Earth, The Life Of God And All The Deeds Of Time Simply Are The Struggles For Spirit To Know Itself, To Find Itself, Be For Itself, And Finally Unite Itself To Itself; It Is Alienated And Divided, But Only So As To Be Able Thus To Find Itself And Return To Itself...as Existing In An Individual Form, This Liberation Is Called 'i'; As Developed To Its Totality, It Is Free Spirit; As Feeling, It Is Love; And As Enjoyment, It Is Blessedness.

...if The Fear Of Falling Into Error Is The Source Of A Mistrust In Science, Which In The Absence Of Any Such Misgivings Gets On With The Work Itself And Actually Does Know, It Is Difficult To See Why, Conversely, A Mistrust Should Not Be Placed In This Mistrust, And Why We Should Not Be Concerned That This Fear Of Erring Is Itself The Very Error.

In History An Additional Result Is Commonly Produced By Human Actions Beyond That Which They Aim At And Obtain -- That Which They Immediately Recognize And Desire. They Gratify Their Own Interest; But Something Further Is Thereby Accomplished, Latent In The Actions In Question, Though Not Present To Their Consciousness, And Not Included In Their Design.

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.

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Philosophy Is The History Of Philosophy.

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Reading The Morning Newspaper Is The Realist's Morning Prayer.

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Public Opinion Contains All Kinds Of Falsity And Truth, But It Takes A Great Man To Find The Truth In It. The Great Man Of The Age Is The One Who Can Put Into Words The Will Of His Age, Tell His Age What Its Will Is, And Accomplish It. What He Does Is The Heart And The Essence Of His Age, He Actualizes His Age. The Man Who Lacks Sense Enough To Despise Public Opinion Expressed In Gossip Will Never Do Anything Great.

The Bud Disappears When The Blossom Breaks Through, And We Might Say That The Former Is Refuted By The Latter; In The Same Way When The Fruit Comes, The Blossom May Be Explained To Be A False Form Of The Plant's Existence, For The Fruit Appears As Its True Nature In Place Of The Blossom.

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Genuine Tragedies In The World Are Not Conflicts Between Right And Wrong. They Are Conflicts Between Two Rights.

The More Certain Our Knowledge The Less We Know.

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The Person Must Give Himself An External Sphere Of Freedom In Order To Have Being As Idea.

All The Worth Which The Human Being Possesses All Spiritual Reality, He Possesses Only Through The State... For Truth Is The Unity Of The Universal And Subjective Will; And The Universal Is To Be Found In The State, In Its Laws, Its Universal And Rational Arrangements. The State Is The Divine Idea As It Exists On Earth. We Have In It, Therefore, The Object Of History In A More Definite Shape Than Before; That In Which Freedom Obtains Objectivity...

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Animals Are In Possession Of Themselves; Their Soul Is In Possession Of Their Body. But They Have No Right To Their Life, Because They Do Not Will It.

I Have The Courage To Be Mistaken.

The Few Assume To Be The Deputies, But They Are Often Only The Despoilers Of The Many.

The Nature Of Finite Things Is To Have The Seed Of Their Passing-away As Their Essential Being: The Hour Of Their Birth Is The Hour Of Their Death.

We Assert Then That Nothing Has Been Accomplished Without Interest On The Part Of The Actors; And — If Interest Be Called Passion, Inasmuch As The Whole Individuality, To The Neglect Of All Other Actual Or Possible Interests And Claims, Is Devoted To An Object With Every Fibre Of Volition, Concentrating All Its Desires And Powers Upon It — We May Affirm Absolutely That Nothing Great In The World Has Been Accomplished Without Passion.

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To Be Independent Of Public Opinion Is The First Formal Condition Of Achieving Anything Great.

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When Individuals And Nations Have Once Got In Their Heads The Abstract Concept Of Full-blown Liberty, There Is Nothing Like It In Its Uncontrollable Strength.

Whatever Happens, Every Individual Is A Child Of His Time; So Philosophy Too Is Its Own Time Apprehended In Thoughts. It Is Just As Absurd To Fancy That A Philosophy Can Transcend Its Contemporary World As It Is To Fancy That An Individual Can Overleap His Own Age, Jump Over Rhodes.

When Needs And Means Become Abstract In Quality, Abstraction Is Also A Character Of The Reciprocal Relation Of Individuals To Oneanother. This Abstract Character, Universality, Is The Character Of Being Recognized And Is The Moment Which Makes Concrete, I.e. Social, The Isolated And Abstract Needs And Their Ways And Means Of Satisfaction.

An Idea Is Always A Generalization, And Generalization Is A Property Of Thinking. To Generalize Means To Think.

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.

In A True Tragedy, Both Parties Must Be Right.

Philosophy Is By Its Nature Something Esoteric, Neither Made For The Mob Nor Capable Of Being Prepared For The Mob.

The Ignorant Man Is Not Free, Because What Confronts Him Is An Alien World, Something Outside Him And In The Offing, On Which He Depends, Without His Having Made This Foreign World For Himself And Therefore Without Being At Home In It By Himself As In Something His Own. The Impulse Of Curiosity, The Pressure For Knowledge, From The Lowest Level Up To The Highest Rung Of Philosophical Insight Arises Only From The Struggle To Cancel This Situation Of Unfreedom And To Make The World One's Own In One's Ideas And Thought.

Whatever Is Reasonable Is True, And Whatever Is True Is Reasonable

Africa Has No History And Did Not Contribute To Anything That Mankind Enjoyed.

Poverty In Itself Does Not Make Men Into A Rabble; A Rabble Is Created Only When There Is Joined To Poverty A Disposition Of Mind, An Inner Indignation Against The Rich, Against Society, Against The Government.

In Duty The Individual Acquires His Substantive Freedom

The Real Is The Rational And The Rational Is The Real.

The Sole Work And Deed Of Universal Freedom Is Therefore Death, A Death Too Which Has No Inner Significance Or Filling, For What Is Negated Is The Empty Point Of The Absolutely Free Self. It Is Thus The Coldest And Meanest Of All Deaths, With No More Significance Than Cutting Off A Head Of Cabbage Or Swallowing A Mouthful Of Water.

What The English Call "comfortable" Is Something Endless And Inexhaustible. Every Condition Of Comfort Reveals In Turn Its Discomfort, And These Discoveries Go On For Ever. Hence The New Want Is Not So Much A Want Of Those Who Have It Directly, But Is Created By Those Who Hope To Make Profit From It.

There Are Plebes In All Classes.

It Is A Matter Of Perfect Indifference Where A Thing Originated; The Only Question Is: Is It True In And For Itself?

The History Of The World Is Not The Theatre Of Happiness. Periods Of Happiness Are Blank Pages In It, For They Are Periods Of Harmony--periods When The Antithesis Is In Abeyance.

Beauty And Art Pervade All The Business Of Life Like A Kindly Genius, Brightly Adorning Our Surroundings Whether Interior Or Exterior, Mitigating The Seriousness Of Existence And The Complexities Of The Real Life, Extinguishing Idleness In An Entertaining Fashion, And, Where There Is Nothing Good To Be Achieved, Filling The Place Of Vice Better Than Vice Itself.

We Must Have A New Mythology, But It Must Place Itself At The Service Of Ideas, It Must Become A Mythology Of Reason. Mythology Must Become Philosophical, So That The People May Become Rational, And Philosophy Must Become Mythological, So That Philosophers May Become Sensible. If We Do Not Give Ideas A Form That Is Aesthetic, I.e., Mythological, They Will Hold No Interest For People.

Children Are Potentially Free And Their Life Directly Embodies Nothing Save Potential Freedom. Consequently They Are Not Things And Cannot Be The Property Either Of Their Parents Or Others.

It Is Because The Method Of Physics Does Not Satisfy The Comprehension That We Have To Go On Further.

The Essence Of The Modern State Is The Union Of The Universal With The Full Freedom Of The Particular, And With The Welfare Of Individuals.

Mere Goodness Can Achieve Little Against The Power Of Nature.

The Evident Character Of This Defective Cognition Of Which Mathematics Is Proud, And On Which It Plumes Itself Before Philosophy, Rests Solely On The Poverty Of Its Purpose And The Defectiveness Of Its Stuff, And Is Therefore Of A Kind That Philosophy Must Spurn

The First Glance At History Convinces Us That The Actions Of Men Proceed From Their Needs, Their Passions, Their Characters And Talents; And Impresses Us With The Belief That Such Needs, Passions And Interests Are The Sole Spring Of Actions.

To Be Aware Of Limitations Is Already To Be Beyond Them.

Quite Generally, The Familiar, Just Because It Is Familiar, Is Not Cognitively Understood. The Commonest Way In Which We Deceive Either Ourselves Or Others About Understanding Is By Assuming Something As Familiar, And Accepting It On That Account; With All Its Pros And Cons, Such Knowing Never Gets Anywhere, And It Knows Not Why.... The Analysis Of An Idea, As It Used To Be Carried Out, Was, In Fact, Nothing Else Than Ridding It Of The Form In Which It Had Become Familiar.

The State Is The Divine Idea As It Exists On Earth.

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.

History Is Not The Soil Of Happiness. The Periods Of Happiness Are Blank Pages In It.

What Experience And History Teach Is This - That Nations And Governments Have Never Learned Anything From History, Or Acted On Any Lessons They Might Have Drawn From It. Variant: What Experience And History Teach Is This - That People And Governments Never Have Learned Anything From History, Or Acted On Principles Deduced From It.

Beauty Is Merely The Spiritual Making Itself Known Sensuously.

The East Knew And To The Present Day Knows Only That One Is Free; The Greek And The Roman World, That Some Are Free; The German World Knows That All Are Free. The First Political Form Therefore Which We Observe In History, Is Despotism, The Second Democracy And Aristocracy, The Third, Monarchy.

It Strikes Everyone In Beginning To Form An Acquaintance With The Treasures Of Indian Literature That A Land So Rich In Intellectual Products And Those Of The Profoundest Order Of Thought.

What Is Rational Is Actual And What Is Actual Is Rational

All Education Is The Art Of Making Men Ethical (sittlich), Of Transforming The Old Adam Into The New Adam.

Destiny Is Consciousness Of Oneself, But Consciousness Of Oneself As An Enemy.

On The Stage On Which We Are Observing It, — Universal History — Spirit Displays Itself In Its Most Concrete Reality.

Nothing Great In The World Has Ever Been Accomplished Without Passion.

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.

It Is Solely By Risking Life That Freedom Is Obtained; . . . The Individual Who Has Not Staked His Or Her Life May, No Doubt, Be Recognized As A Person; But He Or She Has Not Attained The Truth Of This Recognition As An Independent Self-consciousness.

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.

God Is, As It Were, The Sewer Into Which All Contradictions Flow.

Serious Occupation Is Labor That Has Reference To Some Want.

Too Fair To Worship, Too Divine To Love.

As High As Mind Stands Above Nature, So High Does The State Stand Above Physical Life. Man Must Therefore Venerate The State As A Secular Deity.

We Do Not Need To Be Shoemakers To Know If Our Shoes Fit, And Just As Little Have We Any Need To Be Professionals To Acquire Knowledge Of Matters Of Universal Interest.

When Liberty Is Mentioned, We Must Always Be Careful To Observe Whether It Is Not Really The Assertion Of Private Interests Which Is Thereby Designated.

No Man Is A Hero To His Valet. This Is Not Because The Hero Is No Hero, But Because The Valet Is A Valet.

Evil Resides In The Very Gaze Which Perceives Evil All Around Itself.

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.

Truth In Philosophy Means That Concept And External Reality Correspond.

The Spirit Is Never At Rest, But Always Engaged In Progressive Motion, Giving Itself New Form.

If We Go On To Cast A Look At The Fate Of These World-historical Persons, Whose Vocation It Was To Be The Agents Of The World-spirit, We Shall Find It To Have Been No Happy One. They Attained No Calm Enjoyment; Their Whole Life Was Labour And Trouble; Their Whole Nature Was Nought Else But Their Master—passion. When Their Object Is Attained They Fall Off Like Empty Hulls From The Kernel. They Die Early, Like Alexander; They Are Murdered, Like Caesar.

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