Johann Gottfried Herder Quotes

I am not here to think, but to be, feel, live!...Heart! Warmth! Blood! Humanity! Life!

Jeder liebt sein Land, seine Sitten, seine Sprache, sein Weib, seine Kinder, nicht weil sie die besten auf der Welt, sondern weil sie die bewährten Seinigen sind, und er in ihnen sich und seine Mühe selbst liebt.

Liberty, fraternity, and equality, as they are now sprouting up everywhere — they have brought about evil in a thousand abuses, and will continue to do so.

Jak kwiaty zdobią ziemię a gwiazdy niebo, tak Grecja zdobi świat.

Jesus Christ is, in the noblest and most perfect sense, the realized ideal of humanity.

Ukraine will become a new Greece; the beautiful sky under which these people live, their happy disposition, their musical nature, the fruitfulness of their land, etc. will awake some day; from so many small, savage peoples - as the Greeks too once were - will develop a civilized nation, whose territory will extend to the Black Sea and thence throughout the world. Hungary, these peoples, and a portion of Poland and Russia will become participants in this new culture, and its spirit will go forth from the northwest over Europe, which now lies asleep, and make a spiritual conquest of it.

With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship. Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty; even were there no other worse consequences. A person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss; and he, who sends away through the pen and the press every thought, the moment it occurs to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will become a mere journeyman of the printing-office, a compositor.

— “The system of trade!” The greatness and uniqueness of the project is obvious! Three continents devastated and regimented by us, and we depopulated by them, emasculated, sunk in luxury, exploitation, and death: what a rich and happy deal!
Who could do other than to claim his share in the great whirling cloud that is sucking the life out of Europe, than to press for his place within it and to deliver his own children, if not another man’s, to it as the greatest man of trade?
The old name, shepherd of the peoples, has been changed to monopolist, and when the great cloud will one day burst and unleash a hundred tempests, then help us the great god Mammon, whom we are all serving now!

Die Natur des Menschen bleibt immer dieselbe; im zehntausendsten Jahr der Welt wird er mit Leidenschaften geboren, wie er im zweiten derselben mit Leidenschaften geboren ward, und durchläuft den Gang seiner Thorheiten zu einer späten, unvollkommenen, nutzlosen Weisheit. Wir gehen in einem Labyrinth umher, in welchem unser Leben nur eine Spanne abschneidet; daher es uns fast gleichgültig sein kann, ob der Irrweg Entwurf und Ausgang habe.

Wir leben immer in einer Welt, die wir uns selbst bilden.

The universal dress of philosophy and philanthropy can conceal repression, violations of the true personal, human,
local, civil, and national freedom

How transitory all human structures are, nay how oppressive the best institutions become in the course of a few generations. The plant blossoms, and fades: your fathers have died, and mouldered into dust: your temple is fallen: your tabernacle, the tables of your law, are no more: language itself, that bond of mankind, becomes antiquated: and shall a political constitution, shall a system of government or religion, that can be erected solely on these, endure for ever?

It is greatly understated to compare humans to an absorbent sponge, a glowing fuse; they are each an innumerable harmony, a living self that has an effect on all of the forces that surround them.

Der Appetit nach einer schönen Frucht ist angenehmer als die Frucht selbst.

Das Maschinenwerk der Revolutionen irret mich also nicht mehr: es ist unserm Geschlecht so nötig, wie dem Strom seine Wogen, damit er nicht ein stehender Sumpf werde. Immer verjüngt in neuen Gestalten, blüht der Genius der Humanität.