Reading the morning newspaper is the realist's morning . One orients one's attitude toward the either by or by what the world is. The former gives as much security as the latter, in that one knows how one stands.

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.

The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State.

Everybody allows that to know any other science you must have first studied it, and that you can only claim to express a judgment upon it in virtue of such knowledge. Everybody allows that to make a shoe you must have learned and practised the craft of the shoemaker, though every man has a model in his own foot, and possesses in his hands the natural endowments for the operations required. For philosophy alone, it seems to be imagined, such study, care, and application are not in the least requisite

In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain -- that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.

Everything that from eternity has happened in heaven and earth, the life of God and all the deeds of time simply are the struggles for Spirit to know Itself, to find Itself, be for Itself, and finally unite itself to Itself; it is alienated and divided, but only so as to be able thus to find itself and return to Itself...As existing in an individual form, this liberation is called 'I'; as developed to its totality, it is free Spirit; as feeling, it is Love; and as enjoyment, it is Blessedness.

Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone.