Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
|
The word change, so dear to our Europe, has been given a new meaning: it no longer means a new stage of coherent development (as it was understood by Vico, Hegel or Marx), but a shift from one side to another, from front to back, from the back to the left, from the left to the front (as understood by designers dreaming up the fashion for the next season).
|
What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational.
|
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. The march of God in the world, that is what the State is.
|
To shoot a man because one disagrees with his interpretation of Darwin or Hegel is a sinister tribute to the supremacy of ideas in human affairs -- but a tribute nevertheless.
|
The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal.
|
To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.
|
When we walk the streets at night in safety, it does not strike us that this might be otherwise. This habit of feeling safe has become second nature, and we do not reflect on just how this is due solely to the working of special institutions. Commonplace thinking often has the impression that force holds the state together, but in fact its only bond is the fundamental sense of order which everybody possesses.
|
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table
David Hume could out consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill
Plato they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle
Hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene' Descartes was a drunken fart
'I drink, therefore I am'
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed
A lovely little thinker
But a bugger when he's pissed
|
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
|
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.
|
It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.
|
The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with private well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state. It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.
|
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.
|
Reason is the substance of the universe. The design of the world is absolutely rational.
|
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.
|
But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it ...
|
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.
|
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.
|
An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think.
|
If you want to love you must serve, if you want freedom you must die.
|
The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.
|
The courage of the truth is the first condition of philosophic study.
|
The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
|
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 th...
|
Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.
|
War is progress, peace is stagnation.
|
Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.
|
Children are potentially free and their life directly embodies nothing save potential freedom. Consequently they are not things and cannot be ...
|
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.
|