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.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelPeople who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger in abstraction, and their light dies away.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelHistory in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea is Space.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelPoverty in itself does not make men into a rabble; a rabble is created only when there is joined to poverty a disposition of mind, an inner indignation against the rich, against society, against the government.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelAll the worth which the human being possesses all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State... For Truth is the Unity of the universal and subjective Will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of History in a more definite shape than before; that in which Freedom obtains objectivity...
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel