Elements of the Philosophy of Right Quotes

With us philosophy is not practised as a private art, as it was by the Greeks, but has a public place, and should therefore be employed only in the service of the state.

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

The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything.[Beginnende Bildung fängt immer mit dem Tadel an, vollendete aber sieht in jedem das Positive.]

Personality is that which struggles to lift itself above this restriction and to give itself reality, or in other words to claim that external world as its own.[Sie ist das Tätige, sie aufzuheben und sich Realität zu geben, oder, was dasselbe ist, jenes Dasein als das ihrige zu setzen.]

No act of revenge is justified.

History of the world which is the world’s court of judgement.[Der Weltgeschichte, als dem Weltgerichte, ausübt.]

When reflection, feeling, or whatever other form the subjective consciousness may assume, regards the present as vanity, and thinks itself to be beyond it and wiser, it finds itself in emptiness, and, as it has actuality only in the present, it is vanity throughout. Against the doctrine that the idea is a mere idea, figment or opinion, philosophy preserves the more profound view that nothing is real except the idea.

What is reasonable is real; that which is real is reasonable.

What and how much I possess is from the standpoint of right a matter of indifference.

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.[Aber sowenig jemand Schuhmacher zu sein braucht, um zu wissen,ob ihm die Schuhe passen, ebensowenig braucht er über-haupt zum Handwerk zu gehören, um über Gegenstände,die von allgemeinem Interesse sind, Kenntnis zu haben.]

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.[Wahrheit in der Philosophie heißt das, daß der Begriff der Realität entspreche.]

To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational whether in life or in science.[Unabhängigkeit von ihr die erste formelle Bedingungzu etwas Großem und Vernünftigem (in der Wirklichkeitwie in der Wissenschaft).]