Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ But when they desire to draw down to their own level all to which they cannot raise themselves;—when, for example, they would insist that everything which is printed should be made as practically useful as a cookery-book, or a ready-reckoner, or a service-regulation, and decry everything which cannot so be used,—then indeed do they perpetrate a great wrong. ”

“ For although, in all ages, those who have been capable of raising themselves to ideas, have always found themselves in a minority,—yet, for reasons which I may well be excused for withholding here, their number has never been less than at the present time. ”

“ But besides that class of readers who have reasons for their dissatisfaction with what I advance in these Lectures, there are others who hold such speculations as at best useless, because they cannot be carried out into practice, and because they find nothing in the actual world, as it is now constituted, at all corresponding thereto;—indeed it is to be feared that the greater number of otherwise honest, respectable, well-behaved, sober-minded people, will thus judge of them. ”