Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ The conception of Rights involves that when men are to live in a community, each must so restrict his freedom as to permit the coexistence of the freedom of all others. But it does not involve that this particular person, A, is to restrict his freedom by the freedom of those particular persons, B, C, and D. That it has happened so that I, A, must conform myself particularly to the freedom of these, B, C, and D, of all other men, is purely the result of my living together with them; and I so live with them, simply by my free-will, not because there is an obligation for me to do so. ”

“ Woman can not confess to herself that she gives herself up—and since, in a rational being, every thing is only in so far as it arises in consciousness—woman can not give herself up to the sexual impulse merely to satisfy her own impulse. But since she can give herself up only in obedience to an impulse, this impulse must assume in woman the character of an impulse to satisfy the man. Woman becomes, in this act, the means for the end of another, because she can not be her own end without renouncing her ultimate end the dignity of reason! ”

“ To listen to it, to obey it honestly and unreservedly, without fear or equivocation,—this is my true vocation, the whole end and purpose of my existence. My life ceases to be an empty play without truth or significance. There is something that must absolutely be done for its own sake alone;—that which conscience demands of me in this particular situation of life it is mine to do, for this only am I here;—to know it, I have understanding; to perform it, I have power. Through this edict of conscience alone, truth and reality are introduced into my conceptions. ”

“ Seldom is any man so perfect that he may not be much improved through the agency of any other man, in some perhaps apparently unimportant or neglected point of culture.
I know few more sublime conceptions, than the idea of this universal inter-action of the whole human race on itself; this ceaseless life and activity; this eager emulation to give and to receive,’ the noblest strife in which man can take a part; this general indentation of countless wheels into each other, whose common motive-power is freedom; and the beautiful harmony which is the result of all. ”

“ If the executive power of the government were superior to that of the people, or could become superior in a war, the government might at any time undertake to subjugate the people and to reduce them to perfect slavery.
It is, therefore, a condition of the lawfulness of every civil government, that under no circumstances must the power of the government be able to oppose the least resistance to the power of the people as a whole. Every end must be sacrificed to this highest of all ends, which is equivalent to that of maintaining the rule of law itself. ”

“ It is what you really are in your inmost soul that stands forth to your outward eye, and you would never be able to see anything else. If you are to see differently, you must first of all become different. Now, the inner essence of non-German ways, or of non-originality, is the belief in something that is final, fixed, and settled beyond the possibility of change, the belief in a border-line, on the hither side of which free life may disport itself, but which it is never able to break through and dissolve by its own power, and which it can never make part of itself. ”

“ Heat, if it do not again evaporate, but bear within itself an element of endurance, is but the first manifestation of this Light. In the darkness of mere earthly vision, all things stand divided from each other; each individual thing isolated by means of the cold and unillumined matter in which it is embraced. But in this darkness there is no unity. The Light of Religion arises!—and all things burst forth and rush towards each other in reciprocal order and dependence, and float on together, as a united whole, in the One, Eternal, and All-embracing flood of Light. ”

“ Whenever it shall have become the well-matured object of education—from tenderest youth upwards—to develop the inner power of the scholar, but not to give it a direction; to educate man for his own use, and as instrument of his own will, but not as the soulless instrument of others;—then the Science of Knowledge will be universally and easily comprehensible. Culture of the whole man, from earliest youth—this is the only way to spread philosophy. Education must first content itself to be more negative than positive—more a mutual interchange with the scholar than a working upon him ”

“ But, first of all, what basis is there for hoping that we shall keep our language even if we lose our political independence? Surely those who say this do not ascribe this miraculous power to their own persuasions and admonitions when addressed to their children, their children’s children, and to all the centuries to come. Those men now living and mature, who have accustomed themselves to speaking, writing, and reading in the German language, will no doubt go on doing so; but what will the next generation do, and, more important still, the third generation? ”

“ Only a living language can have such poetry, for only in such a language can the range of sensuous imagery be extended by creative thought, and only in it does what has already been created remain alive and open to the influence of kindred life. Such a language has within itself the power of infinite poetry, ever refreshing and renewing its youth, for every stirring of living thought in it opens up a new vein of poetic enthusiasm. To such a language, therefore, poetry is the highest and best means of flooding the life of all with the spiritual culture that has been attained. ”

“ In immediate consciousness, I appear to myself as free; by reflection on the whole of Nature, I discover that freedom is absolutely impossible; the former must be subordinate to the latter, for it can only be explained by means of it.
What high satisfaction do I enjoy through the system which my understanding has thus completed! What order, what firm connexion, what comprehensive supervision does it introduce into the whole fabric of my knowledge! Consciousness is here no longer that stranger in Nature, whose connexion with existence is so incomprehensible ”

“ I ought to exercise my powers and capacities in every possible way;—but only in order to render myself a more serviceable and fitting instrument of duty, for until the commandment shall have been realized in the outward world, by means of my whole personality, I am answerable for it to my conscience. I ought to exhibit in myself, as far as I am able, humanity in all its completeness;—not for the mere sake of humanity, which in itself has not the slightest worth, but in order that virtue, which alone has worth in itself, may be exhibited, in its highest perfection, in human nature. ”

“ No idle brooding over its own image, no contemplation of its own excellence;—for reflection is swallowed up in fact, and the unresting, ever-burning flame of real Life, having annihilated the Past and sunk it into the depths of oblivion, leaves neither time nor opportunity again to recall it thence.
To those in whom the Idea has never attained to life in any form, such delineations of the Blessedness of the Life in Idea are wholly unintelligible—tones from another world; and—since they necessarily deny the existence of any world but their own,—dreams, folly, and fanaticism. ”

“ But an unjust power is always weak, because it is illogical; and because it has common opinion—often even the opinions of those whom it uses as tools—against itself. The more unjust it is the more impotent and weak; and the more probability, therefore, that those persons who have called the people together will escape the clutches of government.
The people may obey this call or may disregard it. If they assemble in convention, the executive power vanishes into nothingness, and the people sit in judgment upon it and upon those who have called the people together. ”

“ I posit myself as rational, that is, as free. In doing so I have the representation of freedom. In the same undivided act I posit other free beings. Hence, I describe through my power of imagination a sphere of freedom, which these many separate beings divide amongst themselves. I do not ascribe to myself all the freedom which I have posited, because I must also posit other free beings, and must ascribe part of it to them. Thus, in appropriating freedom to myself, I at the same time restrict myself, by leaving freedom to others. ”

“ Were Reason taken away from human life, there would remain only Individuality and the love of Individuality.’ Hence the Life according to Reason consists herein,—that the Individual forget himself in the Race, place his own life in the life of the Race and dedicate it thereto;—the Life opposed to Reason, on the contrary, consists in this,—that the Individual think of nothing but himself, love nothing but himself and in relation to himself, and set his whole existence in his own personal well-being alone:—and since we may briefly call that which is according to Reason good, and that which is opposed to Reason evil, so there is but One Virtue,—to forget one’s own personality;—and but One Vice,—to make self the object of our thoughts. Hence the view of Morality depicted in our last lecture as that of the Third Age here as everywhere precisely reverses the fact, and makes that its only Virtue which is in reality the only Vice, and that its only Vice which is in truth the only Virtue. ”