"To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great."

"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…"

"The State is the reality of the concrete freedom."

"The beautiful is the sensible showing forth of the Idea."

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