When Philosophy with its abstractions paints grey in grey, the freshness and life of youth has gone, the reconciliation is not a reconciliation in the actual, but in the ideal world.
There are Plebes in all classes.
Children are potentially free and their life directly embodies nothing save potential freedom. Consequently they are not things and cannot be the property either of their parents or others.
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.
The proofs of the existence of God are to such an extent fallen into discredit that they pass for something antiquated, belonging to days gone by.
History teaches us that man learns nothing from history.
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.
It strikes everyone in beginning to form an acquaintance with the treasures of Indian literature that a land so rich in intellectual products and those of the profoundest order of thought.
Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.
The real is the rational and the rational is the real.
An individual piece only has meaning when it is seen as part of the whole.
Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.
The more certain our knowledge the less we know.
War is progress, peace is stagnation.
The State is the Divine idea as it exists on Earth.
Nothing great has been and nothing great can be accomplished without passion. It is only a dead, too often, indeed, a hypocriticalmoralizing which inveighs against the form of passion as such.
Destiny is consciousness of oneself, but consciousness of oneself as an enemy.
World history is a court of judgment.
It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.
The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.