“An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think.”

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.

Education in its early stages always begins with fault-finding, but when it is complete, it sees the positive element in everything.

Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.

The very fact that something is determined as a limitation implies that the limitation is already transcended.

No man is a hero to his valet. This is not because the hero is not a hero, but because the valet is a valet.

We learn from history that we do not learn from history.

Once the state has been founded, there can no longer be any heroes. They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.

History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea is Space.

Uneducated people delight in argument and fault-finding, for it is easy to find fault, but difficult to recognize the good and its inner necessity.

The length of the journey has to be borne with, for every moment is necessary.

Lacking strength beauty hates the understanding for asking of her what it cannot do.

The valor that struggles is better than the weakness that endures.

The most obvious symptoms of an epoch-making system are the misunderstandings and the awkward conduct of its adversaries.

War is progress, peace is stagnation.

Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.

What is reasonable is real; that which is real is reasonable.

I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.

If everybody trusts one another, then the person who didn’t prevail will faithfully execute the decision as if it was their idea.

Life is very, very simple and easy to understand, but we complicate it with the beliefs and ideas that we create.

Truths are not truths to you unless you realize them within yourself. Without realization, they are just ideas. For spiritual perception, spiritual consciousness, lies not in vague theological ideas, but in the acquisition of Self-realization.

Truth cannot be sacrificed at the altar of pretended tolerance. Real tolerance is deference to all ideas, not indifference to the truth.

All my life I have had a certain idea of France.

I think we brought to the world, the United States anyway, the whole idea of boycotting as a nonviolent tactic. I think we showed the world that nonviolence can work to make social change.

The idea is not to live forever, it is to create something that will.