Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Quotes
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher and the most influential systematic thinker of the German Idealist tradition. His Phenomenology of Spirit traces the development of consciousness through stages culminating in absolute knowledge, while the Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences set out a comprehensive metaphysical and historical system. The quotes below are attributed to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, organized by topic.
Browse Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel by topic
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on Death
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“Nicht die Neugierde, nicht die Eitelkeit, nicht die Betrachtung der Nützlichkeit, nicht die Pflicht und Gewissenhaftigkeit, sondern ein unauslöschlicher, unglücklicher Durst, der sich auf keinen Vergleich einläßt, führt uns zur Wahrheit.”
Not curiosity , not vanity , not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth . Nürnberg , Sep. 30, 1809; Schrieb's zum Andenken (written to remember) Stammbuchblätter Hegels (Hegel's album sheets) Briefe von und an Hegel , Volume 4, Part 1 , Meiner Verlag, 1977, p. 168
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on Freedom
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“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
Part III. Philosophic History; § 21, as translated by John Sibree ; p. 19, (1900 edition) | Variant translations: | World history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom — a progress whose necessity we have to investigate. As translated by Robert S. Hartman, in Reason In History, A General Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1953) | World history is the progress of the consciousness
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on God
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“Every philosophy is complete in itself and, like a genuine work of art, contains the totality. Just as the works of Apelles and Sophocles, if Raphael and Shakespeare had known them, should not have appeared to them as mere preliminary exercises for their own work, but rather as a kindred force of the spirit, so, too reason cannot find in its own earlier forms mere useful preliminary exercises for itself.”
Difference of the Fichtean and Schellingean System of Philosophy , cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 49 -
“In Mohammedanism the narrow principle of the Jews is expanded into universality and thereby overcome. Here, God is no longer, as in the Far East, regarded as existent in an immediately sensory way but is conceived as the one infinite power elevated above all the multiplicity of the world. Mohammedanism is, therefore, in the strictest sense of the word, the religion of sublimity.”
Hegel , Philosophy of Mind (quoted by W. Wallace & A. V. Miller in Philosophy of Mind, Oxford 2010; also quoted in other words by Slavoj Žižek in A Glance into the Archives of Islam , Lacan dot com, 1997).
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on Justice
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Attributed to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel:
“Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on Knowledge
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“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”
Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counter -
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
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. -
“To be aware of limitations is already to be beyond them.”
As quoted in Inwardness and Existence (1989) by Walter A. Davis, p. 18 -
“Miscellaneous writings of G.W.F. Hegel , translation by Jon Bartley Stewart, Northwestern University Press, 2002, page 247.”
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. -
“Every philosophy is complete in itself and, like a genuine work of art, contains the totality. Just as the works of Apelles and Sophocles, if Raphael and Shakespeare had known them, should not have appeared to them as mere preliminary exercises for their own work, but rather as a kindred force of the spirit, so, too reason cannot find in its own earlier forms mere useful preliminary exercises for ”
Difference of the Fichtean and Schellingean System of Philosophy , cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 49
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on Life
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“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”
Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. | Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm. -
“Reading the morning newspaper is the realist's morning prayer.”
Miscellaneous writings of G.W.F. Hegel , translation by Jon Bartley Stewart, Northwestern University Press, 2002, page 247.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on Mind
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“An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking.”
Jede Vorstellung ist eine Verallgemeinerung, und diese gehört dem Denken an. Etwas allgemein machen, heißt, es denken. ("Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse", Berlin, 1833, p. 35) -
“Hegel , Philosophy of Mind (quoted by W. Wallace & A. V. Miller in Philosophy of Mind, Oxford 2010; also quoted in other words by Slavoj Žižek in A Glance into the Archives of Islam , Lacan dot com, 1997).”
In Mohammedanism the narrow principle of the Jews is expanded into universality and thereby overcome. Here, God is no longer, as in the Far East, regarded as existent in an immediately sensory way but is conceived as the one infinite power elevated above all the multiplicity of the world. Mohammedanism is, therefore, in the strictest sense of the word, the religion of sublimity.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on Nature
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“Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.”
Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy , cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 56
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on Truth
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Attributed to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel:
“What is rational is actual; what is actual is rational.”
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“The truth is the whole.”
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. -
“Not curiosity , not vanity , not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth . Nürnberg , Sep. 30, 1809; Schrieb's zum Andenken (written to remember) Stammbuchblätter Hegels (Hegel's album sheets) Briefe von und an Hegel , Volume 4, Part 1 , Meiner Verlag, 1977, p. 168”
Nicht die Neugierde, nicht die Eitelkeit, nicht die Betrachtung der Nützlichkeit, nicht die Pflicht und Gewissenhaftigkeit, sondern ein unauslöschlicher, unglücklicher Durst, der sich auf keinen Vergleich einläßt, führt uns zur Wahrheit.