1. “An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think.”
2. "A party first truly shows itself to have won the victory when it breaks up into two parties: for so it proves that it contains in itself the principle with which at first it had to conflict, and thus that it has got beyond the one-sidedness which was incidental to its earliest expression. The interest that formerly divided itself between it and that to which it was opposed now falls entirely within itself, and the opposing principle is left behind and forgotten, just because it is represented by one of the sides in the new controversy that now occupies the minds of men. At the same time, it is to be observed that when the old principle thus reappears, it is no longer what it was before; for it is changed and purified by the higher element into which it is now taken up. In this point of view, that discord which appears at first to be a lamentable breach and dissolution of the unity of a party, is really the crowning proof of its success."
3. “Education is the art of making man ethical.”
4. “Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.”
5. "It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: ''Is it true in and for itself?''
6. “Nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors . . . nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”
7. "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."
8. “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.”
9. “The courage of the truth is the first condition of philosophic study.”
10. “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.”
11. “The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything.”
12. "The significance of that 'absolute commandment', know thyself--whether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first utterance--is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine reality--of what is essentially and ultimately true and real--of spirit as the true and essential being."
13. "Thus the heart is everywhere, and each part of the organism is only the specialized force of the heart itself."
14. “To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.”
15. “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.”
16. “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
17. “We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world is accomplished without passion.”
18. “Whatever is reasonable is true, and whatever is true is reasonable.”
19. "What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational. On this conviction the plain man like the philosopher takes his stand, and from it philosophy starts in its study of the universe of spirit as well as the universe of nature. If reflection, feeling, or whatever form subjective consciousness may take, looks upon the present as something vacuous and looks beyond it with the eyes of superior wisdom, it finds itself in a vacuum, and because it is actual only in the present, it is itself mere vacuity. If on the other hand the Idea passes for 'only an Idea', for something represented in an opinion, philosophy rejects such a view and shows that nothing is actual except the Idea. "
