Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth in it. The great man of the age is the one who can put into words the will of his age, tell his age what its will is, and accomplish it. What he does is the heart and the essence of his age, he actualizes his age. The man who lacks sense enough to despise public opinion expressed in gossip will never do anything great.

On the stage on which we are observing it, — Universal History — Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality.

Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.

Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood. The commonest way in which we deceive either ourselves or others about understanding is by assuming something as familiar, and accepting it on that account; with all its pros and cons, such knowing never gets anywhere, and it knows not why.... The analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, was, in fact, nothing else than ridding it of the form in which it had become familiar.

History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea is Space.

The person must give himself an external sphere of freedom in order to have being as Idea.

To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.