Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Quotes

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.

Man is that night, that empty Nothingness, which contains everything in its undivided simplicity: the wealth of an infinite number of representations, of images, not one of which comes precisely to mind, or which [moreover] are not [there] insofar as they are really present. It is the night, the interiority - or - the intimacy of Nature which exists here: [the] pure personal-Ego. In phantasmagorical representations it is night on all sides: here suddenly surges up a blood spattered head; there, another, white, apparition; and they disappear just as abruptly. That is the night that one perceives if one looks a man in the eyes; then one is delving into a night which becomes terrible; it is the night of the world which then presents itself to us.

Spirit is knowledge; but in order that knowledge should exist, it is necessary that the content of that which it knows should have attained to this ideal form, and should in this way have been negated. What Spirit is must in that way have become its own, it must have described this circle; then these forms, differences, determinations finite qualities, must have existed in order that it should make them its own. This represents both the way and the goal-that Spirit should have attained to its own notion or conception, to that which it implicitly is, and in this way only, the way which has been indicated in its abstract moments, does it attain it. Revealed religion is manifested religion, because in it God has become wholly manifest. Here all is proportionate to the notion; there is no longer anything secret in God.

It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value

Abstraktionen in der Wirklichkeit geltend machen, heißt Wirklichkeit zerstören.

In thinking the of the eternal, we must link the eternal with the accidentality of our thinking

is — it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it.

But if a good heart, a good intention, a subjective conviction are declared to be the sources from which actions derive their worth, then there is no longer any hypocrisy or evil at all; for whatever someone does, he can always turn it into something good through reflecting on his good intentions and motives, and so the moment of his convictions renders it good.

Hegel showed a far more modem approach when, during the same period, he compared the discovery of Sanskrit to that of a new continent because, in his view, it established "historic ties between the German and Indian peoples with all the certainty that can be required in dealing with such a subject" .&1 It was for this reason that he promoted the grand conception of the Indians as colonizers of Europe to the rank of irrefutable fact, in contrast to the fabulations (Erdichtungen) with which history is familiar: In the cohesion between the languages of peoples so widely separated from each other ... we are faced with an outcome which shows us that the dispersion of these peoples, starting from Asia, and their distinct evolution beginning with the same common ancestry, is an irrefutable fact (unwidersprechliches Faktum). This has nothing to do with hypothetical combinations of circumstances, great or small, which have enriched history with so many fabulations presented as facts, and which will continue to do so, since fresh combinations of the same circumstances, or of these with others, will always be possible.

The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal and the transient to recognize the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present. For the work of Reason (which is synonymous with the Idea) when considered in its own actuality, is to simultaneously enter external existence and emerge with an infinite wealth of forms, phenomena and phases — a multiplicity that envelops its essential rational kernel with a motley outer rind with which our ordinary consciousness is earliest at home. It is this rind that the Concept must penetrate before Reason can find its own inward pulse and feel it still beating even in the outward phases. But this infinite variety of circumstances which is formed in this element of externality by the light of the rational essence shining in it — all this infinite material, with its regulatory laws — is not the object of philosophy....To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: and what is is Reason.

History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea is Space.

The only Thought which Philosophy brings with it to the contemplation of History, is the simple conception of Reason; that Reason is the Sovereign of the World; that the history of the world, therefore, presents us with a rational process.

Every kind of falsehood and truth is present in public opinion, but it is the prerogative of the great man to discover the truth within it. He who expresses the will of his age, tells it what its will is, and accomplishes this will, is the great man of the age.

Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.

The owl of Minerva first begins her flight with the onset of dusk.