It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: Is it true in and for itself?

The real is the rational and the rational is the real.

Evil resides in the very gaze which perceives Evil all around itself.

As high as mind stands above nature, so high does the state stand above physical life. Man must therefore venerate the state as a secular deity.

Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.

When we walk the streets at night in safety, it does not strike us that this might be otherwise. This habit of feeling safe has become second nature, and we do not reflect on just how this is due solely to the working of special institutions. Commonplace thinking often has the impression that force holds the state together, but in fact its only bond is the fundamental sense of order which everybody possesses.

What experience and history teach is this - that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on any lessons they might have drawn from it. Variant: What experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.