The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything.

Mere goodness can achieve little against the power of nature.

In the case of various kinds of knowledge, we find that what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, exercises, and even pastimes for children; and in this educational progress we can see the history of the world's culture delineated in faint outline.

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.

Science and knowledge, especially that of philosophy, came from the Arabs into the West.

All education is the art of making men ethical (sittlich), of transforming the old Adam into the new Adam.

Every idea, extended into infinity, becomes its own opposite.