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The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the coming of the dusk.
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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
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So ist vielmehr der Fall, daß das Volk, insosern mit diesem Worte ein besonderer Theil der Mitglieder eines Staats bezeichnet ist, den Theil ausdrückt, der nicht weiß was er will.1
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Die Person muß sich eine äußere Sphäre ihrer Freiheit geben, um als Idee zu sein.
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The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.
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Philosophie ... hat zwar ihre Gegenstände zunächst mit der Religion gemeinschaftlich. Beide haben die Wahrheit zu ihrem Gegenstande, und zwar im höchsten Sinne - in dem, daß Gott die Wahrheit und er allein die Wahrheit ist.
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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.
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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.
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What experience and history teach is this - that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
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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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Life has a value only when it has something valuable as its object.
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The beginning of religion, more precisely its content, is the concept of religion itself, that God is the absolute truth, the truth of all things, and subjectively that religion alone is the absolutely true knoweldge.
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Reading the morning newspaper is the realist's morning prayer. One orients one's attitude toward the world either by God or by what the world is. The former gives as much security as the latter, in that one knows how one stands.
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In history, we are concerned with what has been and what is; in philosophy, however, we are concerned not with what belongs exclusively to the past or to the future, but with that which is, both now and eternally - in short, with reason.
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In the 'fulfillment' of both the laws and duty, … the moral disposition ceases to be the universal, opposed to inclination, and inclination ceases to be particular, opposed to the law.
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The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself.
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So muß die Philosophie zwar die Möglichkeit erkennen, daß das Volk sich zu ihr erhebt, aber sie muß sich nicht zum Volk erniedrigen.
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This final aim is God's purpose with the world; but God is the absolutely perfect Being, and can, therefore, will nothing but himself.
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Abstraktionen in der Wirklichkeit geltend machen, heißt Wirklichkeit zerstören.
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Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and ... but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.
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A philosophy without heart and a faith without intellect are abstractions from the true life of knowledge and faith. The man whom philosophy leaves cold, and the man whom real faith does not illuminate, may be assured that the fault lies in them, not in knowledge and faith. The former is still an alien to philosophy, the latter an alien to faith.
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Das Schicksal des jüdischen Volkes ist das Schicksal Makbeths, der aus der Natur selbst trat, sich an fremde Wesen hing, und so in ihrem Dienste alles Heilige der menschlichen Natur zertreten und ermorden, von seinen Göttern (denn es waren Objekte, er war Knecht) endlich verlassen, und an seinem Glauben selbst zerschmettert werden mußte.
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Serious occupation is labor that has reference to some want.
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It is because the method of physics does not satisfy the comprehension that we have to go on further.