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If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions of the human mind.

Wilhelm von Humboldt

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Wilhelm von Humboldt
Age: 67 †
Born: 1767
Born: June 22
Died: 1835
Died: April 8
Anthropologist
Diplomat
Historian
Linguist
Philosopher
Politician
Teacher
Writer
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Human
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Humans
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Mind
Revolution
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More quotes by Wilhelm von Humboldt

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The price of apparent happiness and enjoyment is the neglect of the spontaneous active energies of the acting members.
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When we ... devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, ihen happiness comes of itself.
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Man is more disposed to domination than freedom and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.
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If we reason that we want happiness for others, not for ourselves, then we ought justly to be suspected of failing to recognize human nature for what it is and of wishing to turn men into machines.
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Results are nothing the energies which produce them and which again spring from them are everything.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a thorough will to it. Man can do everything with himself, but he must not attempt to do too much with others.
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Faith can be interested in results only, for a truth once recognized as such puts an end to the believer's thinking.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Work is as much a necessity to man as eating and sleeping. Even those who do nothing that can be called work still imagine they are doing something. The world has not a man who is an idler in his own eyes.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Possession, it is true, crowns exertion with rest but it is only in the illusions of fancy that it has power to charm us.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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If the mind loves solitude, it has thereby acquired a loftier character, and it becomes still more noble when the taste is indulged in.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Government, religion, property, books, are nothing but the scaffolding to build men. Earth holds up to her master no fruit like the finished man.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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The State is not in itself an end, but is only a means towards human development.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Joy mingled with sadness, even with grief, is the deepest human joy. It winds itself about the soul with indescribable sweetness, with a dim but unerring sense for what will some day be born of it.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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I lay very little stress either upon asking or giving advice. Generally speaking, they who ask advice know what they wish to do, and remain firm to their intentions. A man may allow himself to be enlightened on various points, even upon matters of expediency and duty but, after all, he must determine his course of action, for himself.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Life, in all ranks and situations, is an outward occupation, an actual and active work.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Happiness is so nonsynonymous with joy or pleasure that it is not infrequently sought and felt in grief and deprivation.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Every man, however good he may be, has a yet better man dwelling in him, which is properly himself, but to whom nevertheless he is often unfaithful. It is to this interior and less mutable being that we should attach ourselves, not to be changeable, every-day man.
Wilhelm von Humboldt