Georg W F Hegel - Collected Quotes

"Knowledge is only real and can only be set forth fully in the form of science, in the form of system." (Georg W F Hegel, "The Phenomenology of Mind", 1807)

"The evident character of this defective cognition of which mathematics is proud, and on which it plumes itself before philosophy, rests solely on the poverty of its purpose and the defectiveness of its stuff, and is therefore of a kind that philosophy must spurn." (Georg W F Hegel, "The Phenomenology of Spirit", 1807)

"Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle rounded and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the philosophical Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium. The single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through the limits imposed by its special medium, and gives rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in this way resembles a circle of circles. The Idea appears in each single circle, but, at the same time, the whole Idea is constituted by the system of these peculiar phases, and each is a necessary member of the organisation." (Georg W F Hegel, "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences", 1816)

"It is because the method of physics does not satisfy the comprehension that we have to go on further." (Georg W F Hegel, "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences", 1816)

"Generally speaking, symbol is some form of external existence immediately present to the senses, which, however, is not accepted for its own worth, as it lies before us in its immediacy, but for the wider and more general significance which it offers to our reflection. We may consequently distinguish between two points of view equally applicable to the term: first, the significance, and, second, the mode in which such a significance is expressed. The first is a conception of the mind, or an object which stands wholly indifferent to any particular content; the latter is a form of sensuous existence or a representation of some kind or other" (Georg W F Hegel, "Ästhetik" Vol. 2, 1817)

"An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think." (Georg W F Hegel, "The Philosophy of Right", 1820)

"History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea is Space." (Georg W F Hegel, "Lectures on the Philosophy of History", 1837)

"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." (G W Friedrich Hegel, "Introduction to Aesthetics", 1842)

"Education is the art of making man ethical." (Georg W F Hegel)

"Motion is the process, the transition of Time into Space and of Space into Time: Matter, on the other hand, is the relation of Space and Time as a peaceful identity." (Georg W F Hegel)

"Music is architecture translated or transposed from space into time; for in music, besides the deepest feeling, there reigns also a rigorous mathematical intelligence." (Georg W F Hegel)

"People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger in abstraction, and their light dies away." (Georg W F Hegel)

"Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob." (Georg W F Hegel)

"Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond." (Georg W F Hegel)