Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel — "Man is a thinking being, and this is what distinguishes him from the animals."

"The Absolute is pure thought, and pure thought is the Absolute."

"What experience and history teach is this — that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it."

"The world is not a finished thing, but a process."

"The great man of the age is the one who can put into words the will of his age, its meaning, and translate it into action."

"The State is the reality of the moral idea – the moral spirit as substantial will, manifest and clear to itself, which thinks and knows itself, and accomplishes what it knows and in so far as it knows…"