Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820)

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The good is the idea, or unity of the conception of the will with the particular will. Abstract right, well-being, the subjectivity of consciousness, and the contingency of external reality, are in their independent and separate existences superseded in this unity, although in their real essence they are contained in it and preserved. This unity is realized freedom, the absolute final cause of the world.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
But it is rather true that the people, in so far as this term signifies a special part of the citizens, does not know what it wants.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
What the English call comfortable is something endless and inexhaustible. Every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever. Hence the new want is not so much a want of those who have it directly, but is created by those who hope to make profit from it.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counterpart to the real, apprehends the real world in its substance, and shapes it into an intellectual kingdom. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Any idea is a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize something means to think it.

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

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The external embodiment of an act is composed of many parts, and may be regarded as capable of being divided into an infinite number of particulars. An act may be looked on as in the first instance coming into contact with only one of these particulars. But the truth of the particular is the universal. A definite act is not confined in its content to one isolated point of the varied external world, but is universal, including these varied relations within itself. The purpose, which is the product of thought and embraces not the particular only but also the universal side, is intention.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
When reflection, feeling, or whatever other form the subjective consciousness may assume, regards the present as vanity, and thinks itself to be beyond it and wiser, it finds itself in emptiness, and, as it has actuality only in the present, it is vanity throughout. Against the doctrine that the idea is a mere idea, figment or opinion, philosophy preserves the more profound view that nothing is real except the idea.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The owl of Minerva first begins her flight with the onset of dusk.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
What is reasonable is real; that which is real is reasonable.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The essence of the modern state is the union of the universal with the full freedom of the particular, and with the welfare of individuals.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel