text:
Joseph Schumpeter

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an economist from Austria and an influential political scientist.

Quotes

 * In all cases, not only in the two which we have analyzed, recovery came of itself. There is certainly this much of truth in the talk about the recuperative powers of our industrial system. But this is not all: our analysis leads us to believe that recovery is sound only if it does come of itself. For any revival which is merely due to artificial stimulus leaves part of the work of depressions undone and adds, to an undigested remnant of maladjustment, new maladjustment of its own which has to be liquidated in turn, thus threatening business with another crisis ahead. Particularly, our story provides a presumption against remedial measures which work through money and credit. For the trouble is fundamentally not with money and credit, and policies of this class are particularly apt to keep up, and add to, maladjustment, and to produce additional trouble in the future.
 * "Depressions: Can we learn from past experience?" in Schumpeter, Joseph A.; Chamberlin, Edward; Leontief, Wassily W.; Brown, Douglass V.; Harris, Seymour E.; Mason, Edward S.; Taylor, Overton H., The economics of the recovery program (1934)

 * Economists have never allowed their analysis to be influenced by psychologists of their time, but have always framed for themselves such assumptions about psychical processes as they have thought it desirable to make.
 * History of Economic Analysis (1945), p. 27

 * The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.
 * History of Economic Analysis, p. 43

 * This civilization is rapidly passing away, however. Let us rejoice or else lament the fact as much as everyone of us likes; but do not let us shut our eyes to it.
 * "The March into Socialism" (1949)

 * Gentlemen, you are worried about the depression[sic]. You should not be. For capitalism, a depression is a good, cold douche.
 * To economics students, recorded by R. L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (1953)

The Theory of Economic Development (1934)
According to Schumpeter's preface to the English Edition: "The book was published for the first time, in German, in the fall of 1911. When, after it had been out of print for ten years, I consented, not without some reluctance, to a second edition, I omitted the seventh chapter, rewrote the second and the sixth, and shortened and added here and there. This was in 1926. The third German edition is merely a reprint of the second, from which also the present English version has been made."

Ch. 1 : The Circular Flow of Economic Life as Conditioned by Given Circumstances

 * When we inquire about the general forms of economic phenomena, about their uniformities, or about a key to understanding them, we ipso facto indicate that we wish at that moment to consider them as something to be investigated, to be sought for, as the “unknown”; and that we wish to trace them to the relatively “known,” just as any science deals with its object of inquiry.

Ch. 4 : Entrepreneurial Profit

 * The innovation is hazardous, impossible for most producers. But if someone establishes a business having regard to this source of supply, and everything goes well, then he can produce a unit of product more cheaply, while at first the existing prices substantially continue to exist. He then makes a profit. Again he has contributed nothing but will and action, has done nothing but recombine existing factors. Again he is an entrepreneur, his profit entrepreneurial profit. And again the latter, and also the entrepreneurial function as such, perish in the vortex of the competition which streams after them. The case of the choice of new trade routes belongs here.

Ch. 6 : The Business Cycle

 * Why do entrepreneurs appear, not continuously, that is singly in every appropriately chosen interval, but in clusters? Exclusively because the appearance of one or a few entrepreneurs facilitates the appearance of others, and these the appearance of more, in ever-increasing numbers.

 * Only a few people have these qualities of leadership and only a few in such a situation, that is a situation which is not itself already a boom, can succeed in this direction. However, if one or a few have advanced with success many of the difficulties disappear. Others can then follow these pioneers, as they will clearly do under the stimulus of the success now attainable. Their success again makes it easier, through the increasingly complete removal of the obstacles analysed in the second chapter, for more people to follow suit, until finally the innovation becomes familiar and the acceptance of it a matter of free choice.

 * Since as we have seen the entrepreneurial qualification is something which, like many other qualities, is distributed in an ethnically homogeneous group according to the law of error, the number of individuals who satisfy progressively diminishing standards in this respect continually increases. Hence, neglecting exceptional cases — of which the existence of a few Europeans in a negro population would be an example — with the progressive lightening of the task continually more people can and will become entrepreneurs, wherefore the successful appearance of an entrepreneur is followed by the appearance not simply of some others, but of ever greater numbers, though progressively less qualified.

 * Many things may be copied by the latter; the example as such also acts upon them; and many achievements directly serve other branches too [...].

 * The more the process of development becomes familiar and a mere matter of calculation to all concerned, and the weaker the obstacles become in the course of time, the less the “leadership” that will be needed to call forth innovations. Hence the less pronounced will become the swarm-like appearance of entrepreneurs and the milder the cyclical movement.

 * The swarm-like appearance of new combinations easily and necessarily explains the fundamental features of periods of boom.

Quotes about Schumpeter

 * Schumpeter always argued that capitalism, as an intrinsically amoral economic system driven by the pursuit of profit, dissolvent of all barriers to market calculation, depended critically on pre-capitalist - in essence nobiliary - values and manners to hold it together as social and political order. But this aristocratic 'under-girding', as he put it, was typically reinforced by a secondary structure of support, in bourgeois milieux confident of the moral dignity of their own calling: subjectively closer to portraits by Mann than Flaubert.
 * Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity (1999), Ch. 4 : After-effects

 * The aristocratic and the modern were inextricably combined in Joseph Schumpeter. The paradoxes of this great economist, who also served as minister of finance in the post- World War I government of Austria, are suggested by the fact that at his first teaching post, he challenged the university librarian to a duel to win freer access to books for the students. Perhaps Schumpeter was attracted to the big issues because he himself witnessed drastic changes in society.
 * Samuel Bowles, Richard Edwards, and Frank Roosevelt. Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and Change (3rd ed., 2005)

 * Although democratic ideas often yield rather ambiguous answers to the question of inclusion. Schumpeter was an exception. … Schumpeter’s solution, or rather nonsolution, was to allow a demos to draw any line it chooses between itself and other members. … Schumpeter's solution to the problem of composition of the demos is unacceptable, because it effectively erases the distinction between democracy and a nondemocratic order dominated by a collegial elite.
 * Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (1989), Ch. 9 : The Problem of Inclusion

 * I can say that General Theory develops, justifies, rationalizes, extends, applies, and shows economists how to use what had by then become the author's standard themes and approaches in a way that Business Cycles, the History of Economic Analysis, and even Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy do not. Back in 1970, the economist Harry G. Johnson pointed out that all successful founders of schools not only are geniuses with profound insights but also provide a road map that tells their followers and successors what to do to make a successful academic career within the school. Schumpeter did not do that second part.
 * J. Bradford DeLong, "Creative Destruction's Reconstruction: Joseph Schumpeter Revisited", The Chronicle of Higher Education (December 07, 2007)

Schumpeter hated this. And he thought that it was on the way out—that as people became richer and more prosperous, the burgeois virtues would win, and the drive for empire would die. Schumpeter expected the con to end, and a peaceful, less aristocratic, less imperial, less bloodthirsty twentieth century. He was wrong.
 * Empire was the equivalent of a modern-day sports team... The military aristocracy loved to play, and the people loved to watch.
 * J. Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century (2022)

 * Aside from Yugoslavia, experiments with decentralization did not extend to planning innovation, the greatest weakness of the socialist economies. Even where markets were allowed to exert more influence over current production, the state was still responsible for planning the future. And state socialism provided only weak incentives for innovation. The Schumpeterian pressure that forced capitalist firms to innovate or die was not present in the planned economy.
 * Barry Eichengreen, The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (2008) Chap. 5: “Eastern Europe and the Planned Economy”, Princeton University Press, p. 154.

 * We have far more people selling derivatives, index funds and mutual funds (as we call them) than there is intelligence for the task. I am cautious about prediction; I discovered years ago that my correct predictions are forgotten, the others meticulously remembered. But some things are definite; when you hear it being said that we have entered a new economy of permanent prosperity with prices of financial instruments reflecting that happy fact, you should take cover. This has been the standard justification of speculative excess for several centuries — for a good part of the millennium. My one time Harvard colleague Joseph Schumpeter thought inevitable and even beneficial what he called “creative destruction” — the cyclical process by which the system eliminates the people and institutions which are mentally too vulnerable for useful economic service. Unfortunately the process has larger and less benign effects, including the possibility of painful recession or depression.
 * John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Unfinished Business of the Century" (1999)

 * [E]conomics is all around us, and we should cultivate the experience of it in many ways besides formal study. ...Joseph A. Schumpeter is reputed to have made the purist claim that the best way to economics is to study history and mathematics. Even the non-purist would have to agree that these two subjects contribute greatly to economic education, as would many other diverse subjects, such as sociology, psychology, geography, agriculture, urban studies, the law, engineering, public health, transportation, computer programming, and the closely related field of business and public administration. ...The ... catalogues its members according to thirty-six... areas of specialization, but... there must be thousands of different enthusiasms and points of view. And the best way to serve all of these is to study economics directly.
 * Martin Gerhard Giesbrecht, The Evolution of Economic Society: An Introduction to Economics (1972) Ch. 11, On Further Study, p. 329.

 * The developed economies are currently experiencing profound changes. A technological revolution is creating entirely new sectors, based on biotechnology, microprocessors, and telecommunications, whose products are transforming business practices across the economy. A wave of managerial innovations has seen companies around the world adopt new forms of supplier-client relations, just-in-time inventory systems, quality control and team production. Economic activity is shifting from the industrial sector into the service sector. Capitalism seems to be in the midst of one of those 'cycles of creative destruction' that Schumpeter (1950) identified.
 * Peter A. Hall and David Soskice. "An introduction to varieties of capitalism." in Varieties of capitalism: The institutional foundations of comparative advantage (2001)

 * That an economist of Professor Schumpeter's standing should thus have fallen into a trap which the ambiguity of the term "datum" sets to the unwary can hardly be explained as a simple error. It suggests rather that there is something fundamentally wrong with an approach which habitually disregards an essential part of the phenomena with which we have to deal: the unavoidable imperfection of man's knowledge and the consequent need for a process by which knowledge is constantly communicated and acquired. Any approach, such as that of much of mathematical economics with its simultaneous equations, which in effect starts from the assumption that people's knowledge corresponds with the objective facts of the situation, systematically leaves out what is our main task to explain.
 * Friedrich Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945)

 * Speaking about great conversationalists among economists reminds me that you may wonder why I have not yet said more about Schumpeter—certainly the most brilliant talker among economists I have known with the sole exception of Keynes, with whom he had many other things in common, not least a puckish itch pour épater le bourgeois and a certain pretence to omniscience and a tendency to bluff which went far beyond their astounding knowledge. So far as Schumpeter is concerned, the fact is that during the few post-war years he lived at Vienna he had scarcely any contact with the economists and saw little even of those who had been his contemporaries in the Böhm-Bawerk seminar. Of course his two pre-war books and his essay on money were familiar to all of us. But we hardly saw him and some of his pronouncements on current affairs had earned him a reputation as an enfant terrible among economists.
 * Friedrich Hayek, "The Economics of the 1920s as Seen from Vienna" (1963), published in The Fortunes of Liberalism (1992)

 * Schumpeter’s attempt to prove his assertion to the layman characteristically begins by assuming that ‘means of production are present in given and, for the moment, unalterable quantities’. He does not explain to whom these quantities are ‘given’, that is, known, nor how much about their various attributes and potentialities anybody knows.
 * Friedrich Hayek, "Two Pages of Fiction: The Impossibility of Socialist Calculation", Economic Affairs (1982)

 * It was probably the influence of Schumpeter’s teaching more than the direct influence of Oskar Lange that has given rise to the growth of an extensive literature of mathematical studies of ‘resource allocation processes’. As far as I can see they deal as irresponsibly with sets of fictitious ‘data’ which are in no way connected with what the acting individuals can learn as any of Lange's.
 * Friedrich Hayek, "Two Pages of Fiction: The Impossibility of Socialist Calculation", Economic Affairs (1982)

 * Schumpeter was the most romantic of economists, and capitalism to his eyes had all the glamor and excitement of a knightly jousting tourney.
 * Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers, Chapter XI, p. 303

 * For Schumpeter, capitalism itself could not possibly make for conquest and war: its spirit was rational, calculating, and therefore averse to risk-taking on the scale implicit in warmaking and in other heroic antics. Interesting as they were as a counterpoint to the various Marxist theories of imperialism, Schumpeter's views evinced less awareness of the knottiness of the problem he was dealing with than those of Adam Ferguson and Tocqueville that have just been recalled. To go back even further: Cardinal de Retz, with his insistence that the passions are not to be counted out in situations where interest-motivated behavior is considered to be the rule, appears to have had the better part of the argument than either Keynes or Schumpeter.
 * Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the interests (1977)

 * We are far from understanding how to achieve adaptively efficient economies because allocative efficiency and adaptive efficiency may not always be consistent. Allocatively efficient rules would make today's firms and decisions secure - but frequently at the expense of the creative destruction process that Schumpeter had in mind.
 * Douglass C. North, Institutions, institutional change and economic performance (1990) Ch. 9 : Organizations, learning, and institutional change

 * Schumpeter’s approach has an important implication for political behavior. If the constellation of economic interests regularly changes because of innovation and entry, politicians face a fundamentally different world than those in a natural state: open access orders cannot manipulate interests in the same way as natural states do. Too much behavior and formation of interests take place beyond the state’s control. Politicians in both natural states and open access orders want to create rents. Rent-creation at once rewards their supporters and binds their constituents to support them. Because, however, open access orders enable any citizen to form an organization for a wide variety of purposes, rents created by either the political process or economic innovation attract competitors in the form of new organizations. In Schumpeterian terms, political entrepreneurs put together new organizations to compete for the rents and, in so doing, reduce existing rents and struggle to create new ones. As a result, creative destruction reigns in open access politics just as it does in open access economies. Much of the creation of new interests is beyond the control of the state. The creation of new interests and the generation of new sources of rents occur continuously in open access orders.
 * Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast, Violence and Social Orders (2009), Ch. 1 : The Conceptual Framework

 * Specifically, it discusses the possibilities for finding a viable alternative to neoclassical economic growth theory, in the form of some combination of Keynesian macroeconomics and evolutionary growth modeling. In this framework, economies are considered as complex adaptive systems which can generate dissipative structures, depending on the underlying knowledge dynamics and the energy throughput. This macroeconomic framework, which integrates short-run Keynesian elements with long-run Schumpeterian thinking, has to be considered as extremely powerful, both intellectually, as it allows for a much more comprehensive understanding of growth processes, as well as politically, as it offers a meaningful alternative to mainstream approaches which failed to predict the current economic and financial crisis and cannot offer meaningful answers how to get out of the crisis.
 * Andreas Pyka and Maria da Graça Derengowski Fonseca, "Introduction" in Catching Up, Spillovers and Innovation Networks in a Schumpeterian Perspective (2011)

 * Schumpeter was uncharacteristically naive in awarding Lange and Lerner victory over Ludwig von Mises on the issue of whether rational economic calculation would be possible under socialism. Of course Mises was wrong in his sweeping rejection. But Schumpeter of all people should have understood the importance of uncertainty, stochastic error, and dynamic innovation in all social life. And this might have been expected to lead him to award the victory to Hayek for his insistence on the difficulty of pooling information when command and bureaucracy limit the workings of the market. Had Schumpeter lived another third of a century he would also have realized what Oskar Lange had to learn the hard way, that few socialist societies will play the Barone-Lerner-Lange game of simulated decentralized market pricing.
 * Paul Samuelson, "1983: Marx, Keynes and Schumpeter",Eastern Economic Journal, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1983)

 * My Harvard teacher Joseph Schumpeter’s 1939 two-volume treatise is almost a parody of eclecticism: It described short cycles under the Kitchin-Crum terminology; then the good old business cycle of allegedly eight to ten years’ periodicity was labeled Juglar cycles; and of course there were also the long waves of Kondratieff and the Sunday newspaper supplements. But that was not the whole of it. In between Juglars and Kondratieffs came Kuznets’s intermediate cycles in construction and immigration, with an alleged approximate periodicity of 18 to 20 years. The tortured epicycles of pre-Copernicus Ptolemaic astronomy had nothing on Schumpeter.
 * Paul Samuelson, "Summing Up On Business Cycles: Opening Address" in Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, Scott Schuh (eds), Beyond Shocks: What Causes Business Cycles? (1998)

 * Now, at the turn of the millennia, when total-factor-productivity has remarkably soared in America and abroad, both fools and sages sing Schumpeter‘s praise. That would have amused and pleased this worldly scholar who in some dark hours of the night used to despair in his German-shorthand diaries of justly deserved praises passing him by. So Keynes was wrong: in the long run not all of us are dead.
 * Paul Samuelson, "Reflections on the Schumpeter I knew well" (2005)

 * In my view—and that of most contemporary economists, I believe—Schumpeter’s most original and most lastingly significant book was Theory of Economic Development, which appeared in 1911 (and was translated into English in 1934). It was at the University of Czernowitz, not far from the beginning of his career as an economist, that he worked out his conception of the entrepreneur,the maker of “new combinations,” as the driving force and characteristic figure of the fits-and-starts evolution of the capitalist economy. He was explicit that, while technological innovation was in the long run the most important function of the entrepreneur, organizational innovation in governance, finance, and management was comparable in significance. […] I think that this is Schumpeter’s main legacy to economics: the role of technological and organizational innovation in driving and shaping the growth trajectory of capitalist economies. Whole subfields of economics now pursue the subject of the care, feeding, and consequences of innovation, using qualitative and quantitative, historical and mathematical methods.
 * Robert Solow, "Heavy Thinker", New Republic (May 21, 2007)

 * Schumpeter argued that the economy was characterized by a process of creative destruction. An innovator could, through a new product or lower costs of pro duction, establish a dominant position in a market. But eventually, that dominant position would be destroyed, as another new product or process was invented. He worried that the giant corporations he saw being formed during his lifetime would stifle innovation and end this process of creative destruction. His fears, so far, have been unfounded; indeed, many of the largest firms, like IBM, have not been able to manage the innovative process in a way that keeps up with upstart rivals.
 * Joseph E. Stiglitz and Carl E. Walsh, Economics (4th ed) (2006) Ch. 20 : Technological Change

 * Schumpeter emphasizes a “demand-side” explanation for such clustering of innovation. One might also consider a complemen tary “supply-side” explanation: since innovators are, in many cases, working with the same components, it is not surprising to see simultaneous innovation, with several innovators coming up with essentially the same invention at almost the same time. There are many well-known examples, including the electric light, the airplane, the automobile, and the telephone.
 * Hal R. Varian, Part I. "Competition and market power", in The Economics of Information Technology: An Introduction (2004) by Hal R.Varian, Joseph Farrell and Carl Shapiro

 * The term ‘kinship’ correctly suggests the existence not only of contemporary relatives but also of ancestors. Indeed, the recent discussion of dynamic capability was prefigured historically, with a variety of terminology, in a number of sources. Perhaps the most directly relevant example among these earlier contributions is Schumpeter’s discussion of the ‘routinization of innovation’ (Schumpeter 1950). Schumpeter’s argument presented, however, an issue that remains central in contemporary discussion of dynamic capability—the possibly problematic character of the claim that there is such a thing as ‘learned competence’ for doingnew things.
 * Sidney G. Winter, "Dynamic Capability as a Source of Change" in Alexander Ebner, Nikolaus Beck, eds. The Institutions of the Market: Organizations, Social Systems, and Governance (2008)

 * The writings of Joseph Schumpeter contributed an essential part of the broad conceptual framework that now embraces the discussion of dynamic capabilities.
 * Sidney G. Winter, "Dynamic Capability as a Source of Change" in Alexander Ebner, Nikolaus Beck, eds. The Institutions of the Market: Organizations, Social Systems, and Governance (2008)

 * Maybe we expect too much from democracy. The economist Joseph Schumpeter, one of the great modern thinkers to address the question, certainly thought so. Eighteenth-century optimists believed that there was such a thing as the common good, that people could determine it for themselves, and that they would then elect representatives to carry out their will. This “classical theory of democracy,” as Schumpeter argued in 1942, was more a quasi-religious expression of hope than an actual description of how democracies worked. There is no such thing as the common good, he delighted in pointing out. And even if there were, ordinary citizens, including the more educated among them, would be too irrational in their desires and too easily fooled to know what it might be. In theory democratic citizens raise and decide issues. In practice, “the issues that shape their fate are normally decided for them.”
 * Alan Wolfe, "Democracy Without Accountability" in Does American democracy still work? (2006)

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title: Joseph Schumpeter


text:
Friedrich Schlegel

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (later: von) Schlegel (10 March 1772 - 12 January 1829), usually referred to as Friedrich Schlegel, was a German poet, critic and scholar. He was the younger brother of August Wilhelm Schlegel.

 * See also: Athenaeum Fragments

Quotes

 * Die romantische Poesie ist eine progressive Universalpoesie.
 * The romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry.
 * Progressive Universalpoesie (1798); in the German language, particularly in the Romantic schools, "Poesie" means both poetry as genre and faculty and the source of creativity to form poetry.

 * Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
 * Aphorism 48, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968), p. 151

 * Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.
 * Aphorism 26, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968), p. 151
 * Variant translation:
 * Wit is the appearance, the external flash, of fantasy. Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism.
 * As translated in The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (1996) edited by Frederick C. Beiser, p. 131

 * Honour is the mysticism of legality.
 * Aphorism 77, of Ideas as translated in The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (1996) edited by Frederick C. Beiser, p. 131

 * It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system and to have none. One must thus decide to join the two.
 * As quoted in Divine Madness : On Interpreting Literature, Music, and The Visual Arts Ironically (2002) by Lars Elleström, p. 50
 * Variant translations, of the paradoxical statement which begins in German with Es ist gleich tödlich für den Geist, ein System zu haben, und keins zu haben.:
 * It is equally fatal for the spirit, to have a system and not to have.
 * The Innovations of Idealism (2003) by Rüdiger Bubner, p. 193
 * It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system and to have none. It will simply have to decide to combine the two.
 * As quoted in Friedrich Schlegel and the Emergence of Romantic Philosophy' (2007) by Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert, p. 203
 * It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system, and to have none. So the spirit must indeed resolve to combine the two.
 * As quoted in Hegel : Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1825-6 : Volume I'', (2009) by Robert F. Brown, footnote, p. 59

 * In the same way as philosophy loses sight of its true object and appropriate matter, when either it passes into and merges in theology, or meddles with external politics, so also does it mar its proper form when it attempts to mimic the rigorous method of mathematics.
 * Philosophy of Life, Lecture 1

 * In England … everything becomes professional … even the rogues of that island are pedants.
 * “Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #67

 * Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation of the necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.
 * “Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #117

 * Die Romane sind die sokratischen Dialoge unserer Zeit. In diese liberale Form hat sich die Lebensweisheit vor der Schulweisheit geflüchtet.
 * Novels are the Socratic dialogs of our time. This free form has become the refuge of common sense in its flight from pedantry.
 * Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Critical Fragments,” § 26

 * Whoever hasn’t yet arrived at the clear realization that there might be a greatness existing entirely outside his own sphere and for which he might have absolutely no feeling; whoever hasn’t at least felt obscure intimations concerning the approximate location of this greatness in the geography of the human spirit: that person either has no genius in his own sphere, or else he hasn’t been educated to the level of the classic.
 * Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Critical Fragments,” § 36

 * Bei den Ausdrücken, „Seine Philosophie”, „Meine Philosophie”, erinnert man sich immer an die Worte im Nathan: „Wem eignet Gott? Was ist das für ein Gott, der einem Menschen eignet?”
 * At the words “his philosophy, my philosophy,” one is always reminded of that line in Nathan: … “What kind of God is it who belongs to a man?”
 * Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 99, reference is to Lessing, Nathan der Weise

 * Romantic poetry … recognizes as its first commandment that the will of the poet can tolerate no law above itself.
 * Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 116

 * To live classically and to realize antiquity practically within oneself is the summit and goal of philology.
 * Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 147

 * Die Menge nicht zu achten, ist sittlich; sie zu ehren, ist rechtlich.
 * To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.
 * Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Athenaeum Fragments” § 211

 * Du sollst dir kein Ideal machen, weder eines Engels im Himmel, noch eines Helden aus einem Gedicht oder Roman, noch eines selbstgeträumten oder fantasirten; sondern du sollst einen Mann lieben, wie er ist.
 * Thou shalt not make unto thee any ideal, neither of an angel in heaven, nor of a hero in a poem or novel, nor one that is dreamed up or imagined: rather shalt thou love a man as he is.
 * Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Athenaeum Fragments,” § 364

 * There are people with whom everything they consider a means turns mysteriously into an end.
 * Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 428

 * The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 5

 * Nur derjenige kann ein Künstler seyn, welcher eine eigne Religion, eine originelle Ansicht des Unendlichen hat.
 * Only he who possesses a personal religion, an original view of infinity, can be an artist.
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #13

 * Künstler ist ein jeder, dem es Ziel und Mitte des Daseyns ist, seinen Sinn zu bilden.
 * An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) # 20

 * Es ist der Menschheit eigen, dass sie sich über die Menschheit erheben muss.
 * The need to raise itself above humanity is humanity’s prime characteristic.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 21

 * Tugend ist zur Energie gewordne Vernunft.
 * Virtue is reason which has become energy.
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #23

 * Die wahre Tugend ist Genialität.
 * True virtue is genius.
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #36

 * Die Pflicht der Kantianer verhält sich zu dem Gebot der Ehre, der Stimme des Berufs und der Gottheit in uns, wie die getrocknete Pflanze zur frischen Blume am lebenden Stamme.
 * The Kantians’ conception of duty relates to the commandment of honor, the voice of God and one’s calling in us, as the dried plant to the fresh flower on the living stem.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 39

 * Was die Menschen unter den andern Bildungen der Erde, das sind die Künstler unter den Menschen.
 * What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men.
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) # 43

 * Ein Mittler ist derjenige, der Göttliches in sich wahrnimmt, und sich selbst vernichtend Preis giebt, um dieses Göttliche zu verkündigen, mitzutheilen, und darzustellen allen Menschen in Sitten und Thaten, in Worten und Werken.
 * A mediator is one who perceives the divinity within himself and who self-destructively sacrifices himself in order to reveal, communicate, and represent to all mankind this divinity in his conduct and actions, in his words and works.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 44

 * Ein Künstler ist, wer sein Centrum in sich selbst hat. Wem es da fehlt, der muss einen bestimmten Führer und Mittler ausser sich wählen.
 * An artist is someone who carries his center within himself. Whoever lacks such a center has to choose some particular leader and mediator outside of himself.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 45

 * Dem Bunde der Künstler einen bestimmten Zweck geben, das heisst ein dürftiges Institut an die Stelle des ewigen Vereins setzen; das heisst die Gemeinde der Heiligen zum Staat erniedrigen.
 * To give the community of artists a particular purpose would mean … debasing the community of saints into a state.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 49

 * Der Künstler darf eben so wenig herrschen als dienen wollen. 15 Er kann nur bilden, nichts als bilden, für den Staat also nur das thun, dass er Herrscher und Diener bilde, dass er Politiker und Oekonomen zu Künstlern erhebe.
 * The artist should have as little desire to rule as to serve. He can only create, do nothing but create, and so help the state only by … exalting politicians and economists into artists.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 54

 * Grade die Individualität ist das Ursprüngliche und Ewige im Menschen; an der Personalität ist so viel nicht gelegen. Die Bildung und Entwicklung dieser Individualität als höchsten Beruf zu treiben, wäre ein göttlicher Egoismus.
 * It is individuality which is the original and eternal within man; personality doesn’t matter so much. To pursue the education and development of this individuality as one’s highest vocation would be a divine egoism.
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) # 60

 * Man hat nur so viel Moral, als man Philosophie und Poesie hat.
 * One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #62

 * Durch die Künstler wird die Menschheit ein Individuum, indem sie Vor welt und Nachwelt in der Gegenwart verknüpfen. Sie sind das höhere Seelenorgan, wo die Lebensgeister der ganzen 15 äussern Menschheit zusammentreffen und in welchem die innere zunächst wirkt.
 * Through artists mankind becomes an individual, in that they unite the past and the future in the present. They are the higher organ of the soul, where the life spirits of entire external mankind meet and in which inner mankind first acts.
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #64 [cf. Heidegger]

 * Nur durch die Bildung wird der Mensch, der es ganz ist überall menschlich und von Menschheit durchdrungen.
 * Only by being cultivated does a human being … become altogether human and permeated by humanity.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 65

 * Moralität ohne Sinn für Paradoxie ist gemein.
 * Morality without sense for paradox is vulgar.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 76

 * Man lebt nur insofern man nach seinen eignen Ideen lebt. Die Grundsätze sind nur Mittel, der Beruf ist Zweck an sich.
 * You live only insofar as you live according to your own ideas.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 82

 * Du wolltest die Philosophie zerstören, und die Poesie, um Raum zu gewinnen für die Religion und Moral, die du verkanntest: aber du hast nichts zerstören können als dich selber.
 * You wanted to destroy philosophy and poetry in order to make room for religion and morality
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (1968) #90

 * Auf eine ähnliche Weise sollen in der vollkommnen Litteratur alle Bücher nur Ein Buch seyn, und in einem solchen ewig werdenden Buche wird das Evangelium der Menschheit und der Bildung offenbart werden.
 * In a perfect literature all books should be only a single book, and in such an eternally developing book, the gospel of humanity and culture will be revealed.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 95

 * Denke dir ein Endliches ins Unendliche gebildet, so denkst du einen Menschen.
 * Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (1968) #98

 * Wo Politik ist oder Oekonomie, da ist keine Moral.
 * Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (1968) #101

 * Nicht in die politische Welt verschleudere du Glauben und Liebe, aber in der göttlichen Welt der Wissenschaft und der Kunst opfre dein Innerstes in den heiligen Feuerstrom ewiger Bildung.
 * Do not waste your faith and love on the political world, but, in the divine world of science and art, offer up your inmost being in a fiery stream of eternal creation.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 106

 * Was sich thun lässt, so lange Philosophie und Poesie getrennt sind, ist gethan und vollendet. Also ist die Zeit nun da, beyde zu vereinigen.
 * Whatever can be done while poetry and philosophy are separated has been done and accomplished. So the time has come to unite the two.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 108

 * Deute den lieblichen Schein und mache Ernst aus dem Spiel, so wirst du das Centrum fassen und die verehrte Kunst in höherm Lichte wieder finden.
 * Take playfulness seriously, and you will apprehend what is at the center and rediscover your revered art in a more sublime light.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 109

 * Wie die Senatoren der Römer sind die wahren Künstler ein Volk von Königen.
 * Like the Roman senators, true artists are a nation of kings.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 114

 * Nur wer einig ist mit der Welt kann einig seyn mit sich selbst.
 * Only a man who is at one with the world can be at one with himself.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 130

 * Worauf bin ich stolz und darf ich stolz seyn als Künstler?Auf den Entschluss, der mich auf ewig von (29) allem Gemeinen absonderte und isolirte.
 * What am I proud of, and what can I be proud of as an artist? Of the decision that separated and isolated me forever from everything ordinary.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 136

 * Es giebt keine Selbstkenntniss als die historische. Niemand weiss was er ist, wer nicht weiss was seine Genossen sind.
 * There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn’t know what his contemporaries are.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 139

 * Selbst in den äusserlichen Gebräuchen sollte sich die Lebensart der Künstler von der Lebensart der übrigen Menschen durchaus unterscheiden. Sie sind Braminen, eine höhere Kaste, aber nicht durch Geburt sondern durch freye Selbsteinweihung geadelt.
 * The life of the artist should be distinguished from that of all other people, even in external habits. They are Brahmins, a higher caste, not ennobled by birth, however, but through deliberate self-initiation.
 * “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) # 146
 * Variant translation: Even in their outward behavior, the lives of artists should differ completely from the lives of other men. They are Brahmins, a higher caste: ennobled not by birth, but by free self-consecration.
 * “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 146

 * Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.
 * “On Philosophy: To Dorothea,” in Theory as Practice (1997), p. 420

 * Expect nothing more from philosophy than a voice, language and grammar of the instinct for Godliness that lies at its origin, and, essentially, is philosophy itself.
 * “On Philosophy: To Dorothea,” in Theory as Practice (1997), p. 421

 * When one considers the sublime disposition underlying the tmly universal educatiOn (of traditional India) ... then what IS or has been called religion in Europe seems to us to be scarcely deserving of that name. And one feels compelled to advise those who Wish to witness religion to travel to India for that purpose ....
 * quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

 * India is not only at the origin of everything, she is superior in everything, intellectually, religiously or politically and even the Greek heritage seems pale in comparison.
 * quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

 * The divine origin of man, as taught by Vedanta, IS continually inculcated, to stimulate his efforts to return, to animate him in the struggle, and incite him to consider a reunion and reincorporation with Divinity as the one primary object of every action and reaction. Even the loftiest philosophy of the European, the idealism of reason as it is set forth by the Greek philosophers, appears in comparison with the abundant light and vigor of Oriental idealism like a feeble Promethean spark in the full flood of heavenly glory of the noonday sun, faltering and feeble and ever ready to be extinguished.
 * quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

 * In India lay the real source of all tongues, of all thoughts and utterances of the human mind. Everything - yes, everything without exception - has it origin in India." and "The primary source of all intellectual development - in a word the whole human culture - is unquestionably to be found in the tradItions of the East.
 * quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

 * India is pre-eminently distinguished for the many traits of original grandeur of thought and of the wonderful remains of immediate knowledge.
 * quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

 * The doctrine of the transmigration of souls was indigenous to India and was brought into Greece by Pythagoras.
 * quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

 * Germany had no material interests and responded spiritually to India. Friedrich Schlegel, hailed as “the inventor of the Oriental Renaissance,” wrote in 1803, “Everything, yes, everything without exception has its origin in India.” He proclaimed India with Greece and Germany, the most philosophical of nations. “If one considers,” he said, “the superior conception which is at the basis of the truly universal Indian culture and which, itself divine, knows how to embrace in its universality everything that is divine without distinction, then, what we in Europe call religion or what we used to call such, no longer seems to deserve that name. And one would like to advice everyone who wants to see religion, he should, just as one goes to Italy to study art, go to India for that purpose where he may be certain to find at least fragments for which he will surely look in vain in Europe.” Friedrich Schlegel’s The Language and Wisdom of the Indians (1808) was the first German contribution to Indology. Friedrich wrote, “May Indic studies find as many disciples and protectors as Germany and Italy saw spring up in such great numbers for Greek studies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and may they be able to do as many things in as short a time. The Renaissance of antiquity promptly transformed and rejuvenated all the sciences; we might add that it rejuvenated and transformed the world. We could even say that the effects of Indic studies, if these enterprises were taken up and introduced into learned circles with the same energy today, would be no less great or far-reaching.”
 * quoted in Jain, S., & Jain, M. (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. vol 4. Introduction

 * It cannot be denied that the early Indians possessed knowledge of God. All their writings are replete with sentiments and expressions, noble, clear, severely grand, as deeply conceived in any human language in which men have spoken of their God.
 * quoted in Knapp, Stephen Proof of Vedic Culture s Global Existence. Published byThe World Relief Network Detroit 2000. p. vii as quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture

 * "Everything, absolutely everything, comes from India."
 * quoted in Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Inder

 *

 * "It is true that the Indian is almost entirely a philosophical or rather a religious language, and perhaps none, not even excepting the Greek, is so philosophically clear and sharply defined: It has no variable or arbitrary combination of abstractions, but is formed on It permanent system, in which the deep symbolic signification of words and expressions reciprocally explain, elucidate, and support each other.
 * quoted in Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.(29-30)

 * "Already from the beginning possessed the brightest and most sincere clarity [and that it had] in its first and most fundamental parts the highest concepts from the world of pure thought, just as it expresses the whole foundation of consciousness not through image, but with immediate clarity.
 * as quoted in Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. (30)

Athenäum (1798 - 1800)

 * Quotes from the journal he founded with his brother August Wilhelm Schlegel
 * See also: Athenaeum Fragments

 * Der Historiker ist ein rückwärtsgekehrter Prophet.
 * The historian is a reversed prophet.
 * Athenäum, I, 2, 20: Fragmente

 * Der Satan der italienischen und englischen Dichter mag poetischer sein; aber der deutsche Satan ist satanischer; und insofern könnte man sagen, der Satan sei eine deutsche Erfindung.
 * The Satan of the Italian and English poets may be poetic; but the German Satan is satanic; and thus one could say that Satan is a German invention.
 * Athenäumsfragmente 379; the Italian and English poets referred to are Dante, and John Milton.

 * Giebts eine unsichtbare Kirche, so ist es die jener grossen Paradoxie, die von der Sittlichkeit unzertrennlich ist, und von der bloss philosophischen noch sehr unterschieden werden muss. Menschen, die so ekzentrisch sind, im vollen Ernst tugendhaft zu seyn und zu werden, verstehn sich überall, finden sich leicht, und bilden eine stille Opposizion gegen die herrschende Unsittlichkeit, die eben für Sittlichkeit gilt. Ein gewisser Mystizismus des Ausdrucks, der bey einer romantischen Fantasie und mit grammatischem Sinn verbunden, etwas sehr Reizendes und etwas sehr Gutes seyn kann, dient ihnen oft als Symbol ihrer schönen Geheimnisse.
 * If there is an invisible church, then it is of the great paradox, which is inseparable from morality, and which must be distinguished from the merely philosophical. People who are so eccentric that they are completely serious in being and becoming virtuous understand one another in everything, find one another easily, and form a silent opposition against the prevailing immorality that pretends to be morality. A certain mysticism of expression, which joined with romantic fantasy and grammatical understanding, can be something charming and good, often serves as a symbol of their beautiful secrets.
 * Athenäumsfragmente 414
 * Variant translations:
 * People who are eccentric enough to be quite seriously virtuous understand each other everywhere, discover each other easily, and form a silent opposition to the ruling immorality that happens to pass for morality.
 * Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 414

 * Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.
 * “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #31

 * One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.
 * “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #54

 * Jeder ungebildete Mensch ist die Karikatur von sich selbst.
 * Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
 * “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #63

 * Moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.
 * “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #64

 * Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.
 * “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #96

 * Als vorübergehender Zustand ist der Skeptizismus logische Insurrektion; als System ist er Anarchie. Skeptische Methode wäre also ungefähr wie insurgente Regierung.
 * As a transitional condition, skepticism is logical insurrection; as a system, it is anarchy. Skeptical method would therefore be much the same as rule by insurgents.
 * #97, as translated in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings (1996), vol. 1, p. 136

 * Religion is usually nothing but a supplement to or even a substitute for education, and nothing is religious in the strict sense which is not a product of freedom.
 * “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #233

 * Fragmente, sagen Sie, wären die eigentliche Form der Universalphilosophie.
 * Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.
 * “A” in “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #259

The Philosophy of History (1852)

 *  In a Course of Lectures Delivered at Vienna 2nd Edition, Tr., Bohn's Standard Library, Schlegal's Philosophy of History. A source.

Author's Preface
Should this restoration in the internal consciousness be fully understood, and really brought about, the object of pure philosophy is attained.
 * The most important subject, and the first problem of philosophy, is the restoration in man of the lost image of God; so far as this relates to science.

 * To point out historically... the progress of this restoration in the various periods of the world, constitutes the object of the "Philosophy of History."

Lecture I.

 * This perception—this comprehension—this right discernment of the great events and general results of universal history, is what might be termed a science of history; and I would have here preferred that term, were it not liable to much misconception, and might have been understood as referring more to special and learned inquiries, than the other name I have adopted...

 * [A]ll those countless battles—those endless, and... for the greater part, useless wars, of which... fills up for so many thousand years... are but little atoms compared with the great whole of human destiny.

 * The first fundamental rule of historical science and research, when by these is sought a knowledge of the general destinies of mankind, is to keep these, and every object connected with them, steadily in view, without losing ourselves in the details of special inquiries and particular facts, for the multitude and variety of these subjects is absolutely boundless; and on the ocean of historical science the main subject easily vanishes from the eye. ...In the higher grades of academic instruction, the lessons on history must vary with each one's calling and pursuits ...[T]he archives of many a state would alone furnish occupation for more than a man's life. ...The first fundamental rule ...to keep the attention fixed on the main subject, and not to let it be distracted or dissipated by a number of minute details—concerned more the method of historical science. The second rule regards the subject and purport of history... [W]e should not wish to explain every thing. Historical tradition must never be abandoned in the —otherwise we lose all firm ground and footing... [W]e have nothing to do but to record, as it is given, the best and safest testimony which tradition, so far as we have it, can afford... Extremely hazardous is the desire to explain every thing, and to supply whatever appears a gap in history—for in this propensity lies the first cause and germ of all those violent and arbitrary hypotheses which perplex and pervert the science of history far more than the open avowal of our ignorance, or the uncertainty of our knowledge: hypotheses which give an oblique direction, or an exaggerated and false extension to a view of the subject originally not incorrect. And even if there are points which appear not very clear to us, or which we leave unexplained—this will not prevent us from comprehending, so far... as the limited conception of man is able, the great outline of human history, though here and there a gap should remain.

Quotes about Friedrich Schlegel

 * In a man like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years, became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part.
 * Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be (1952), p. 117

 * Friedrich Schlegel is one example of a thinker whose reputation has suffered unjustly. Bernal writes about him that he was a racist, ‘even if he never expressed it clearly’.... The fact is that Schlegel maintains that the human being's physique is fairly irrelevant for understanding the events of history...
 * Arvidsson, S. (2006). Aryan idols: Indo-European mythology as ideology and science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press., 108

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Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Inuo. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Inuo~enwikiquote that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:26, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:49, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Inuo~enwikiquote


text:
User talk:Cdmglchen

Hi. Welcome to English Wikiquote. Enjoy!-- Aphaia 09:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * For a quick overview of what Wikiquote is, read Wikiquote.
 * Also see What Wikiquote is not for common activities that Wikiquote does not support.
 * To ask for help or to talk with another editor, visit our Village pump.
 * To browse Wikiquote, take a look at our browsing start page.
 * Before creating new articles, consult our guide. You may practice how to edit a page at Sandbox.
 * Please remember to use edit summaries when editing pages.
 * When posting to a discussion, please sign with a date by writing four tildes (~~) and saving.
 * Be bold.

Please do not advertise you or your company
We are a website run by a non-profit, and don't accept that. Your former posting will be removed due to self-advertisement.

Thank you for your understanding, --Aphaia 08:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Cdmglchen


text:
Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Kidstreet

Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 15:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Kidstreet
no significant quotes, rather dumb copy of a entire show (either TV or radio, I don't know). I doubt it it is within our scope.
 * Vote closed: Result: delete. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 15:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Delete --Aphaia 09:09, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. ~ UDScott 12:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete if not cleaned up.--Jusjih 15:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. - InvisibleSun 03:26, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Abysmal quotes.--Poetlister 16:29, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

title: Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Kidstreet


text:
User talk:Weirdel27

Hi. Welcome to English Wikiquote. Enjoy!-- Aphaia 09:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * For a quick overview of what Wikiquote is, read Wikiquote.
 * Also see What Wikiquote is not for common activities that Wikiquote does not support.
 * To ask for help or to talk with another editor, visit our Village pump.
 * To browse Wikiquote, take a look at our browsing start page.
 * Before creating new articles, consult our guide. You may practice how to edit a page at Sandbox.
 * Please remember to use edit summaries when editing pages.
 * When posting to a discussion, please sign with a date by writing four tildes (~~) and saving.
 * Be bold.

title: User talk:Weirdel27