Von Humboldt Quotes

When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself
nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Statistical projections which speak to the senses without fatiguing the mind, possess the advantage of fixing the attention on a great number of important facts. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

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

Man is naturally more disposed to beneficent than selfish actions. This we learn even from the history of savages. The domestic virtues have something in them so inviting and genial, and the public virtues of the citizen something so grand and inspiring, that even he who is barely uncorrupted, is seldom able to resist their charm. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

There are some races more cultured and advanced and ennobled by education than others; but there are no races nobler than others. All are equally destined for freedom. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

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

For even if we know very little that is certain about spirit or soul, the true nature of the body, of materiality, is totally unknown and incomprehensible to us. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Petroleum is the product of a distillation from great depth and issues from the primitive rocks beneath which the forces of all volcanic action lie. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind and exercise of the body; the two are ever united. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The sensual and spiritual are linked together by a mysterious bond, sensed by our emotions, though hidden from our eyes. To this double nature of the visible and invisible world - to the profound longing for the latter, coupled with the feeling of the sweet necessity for the former, we owe all sound and logical systems of philosophy, truly based on the immutable principles of our nature, just as from the same source arise the most senseless enthusiasms. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Nature can be so soothing to the tormented mind ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

The real discoverer of South America was [Alexander von] Humboldt, since his work was more useful for our people than the work of all conquerors. ~ Simon Bolivar

Governmental regulations all carry coercion to some degree, and even where they don't, they habituate man to expect teaching, guidance and help outside himself, instead of formulating his own. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The most powerful influence exercised by the Arabs on general natural physics was that directed to the advances of chemistry ; a science for which this race created a new era.( ... ) Besides making laudatory mention of that which we owe to the natural science of the Arabs in both the terrestrial and celestial spheres, we must likewise allude to their contributions in separate paths of intellectual development to the general mass of mathematical science. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

We aren't born with a ready-made conscience. As we pass through life, we hurt people and people hurt us, we act compassionately and others show compassion to us. If we pay attention, our moral sensitivity sharpens, and these experiences become a source of valuable ethical knowledge about what is good, what is right and who I really am.
Humanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change, leading from ignorance to enlightenment by means of experiences. The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a large variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences. In the early nineteenth century, Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is 'a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom'. He also wrote that 'there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human'. This could well be the humanist motto. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The philosophical study of nature endeavors, in the the vicissitudes of phenomena, to connect the present with the past. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

With most animals, as with man, the alertness of the senses diminishes after years of work, after domestic habits and progress of culture. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

Natural objects themselves, even when they make no claim to beauty, excite the feelings, and occupy the imagination. Nature pleases, attracts, delights, merely because it is nature. We recognize in it an Infinite Power. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

It is a characteristic of old age to find the progress of time accelerated. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Women are in this respect more fortunate than men, that most of their employments are of such a nature that they can at the same time be thinking of quite different things. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

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. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Die gefährlichste Weltanschauung ist die Weltanschauung derer, die die Welt nie angeschaut haben. (The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world) ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

People often say that I'm curious about too many things at once ... But can you really forbid a man from harbouring a desire to know and embrace everything that surrounds him? ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

The sea has been called deceitful and treacherous, but there lies in this trait only the character of a great natural power, which, to speak according to our own feelings, renews its strength, and, without reference to joy or sorrow, follows eternal laws which are imposed by a higher Power. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those have not viewed the world. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

This view of a living nature where man is nothing is both odd and sad. Here, in a fertile land, in an eternal greenness, you search in vain for traces of man; you feel you are carried into a different world from the one you were born into. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

[Alexander von] Humboldt showers us with true treasures. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

This man [Alexander von Humboldt] is as knowledgeable as a whole academy. ~ Claude Louis Berthollet

At no other time has Nature concentrated such a wealth of valuable nourishment into such a small space as in the cocoa bean. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

Every scientist is a descendant of Humboldt. We are all his family. ~ Emil Heinrich Du Bois-Reymond

Our imagination is struck only by what is great; but the lover of natural philosophy should reflect equally on little things. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

How a person masters his or her fate is more important than what that fate is. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

A man must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Wherever the citizen becomes indifferent to his fellows, so will the husband be to his wife, and the father of a family toward the members of his household. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

I could not possibly have been placed in circumstances more highly favorable for study and exploration than those which I now enjoy. I am free from the distractions constantly arising in civilized life from social claims. Nature offers unceasingly the most novel and fascinating objects for learning. The only drawbacks to this solitude are the want of information on the progress of scientific discovery in Europe and the lack of all the advantages arising from an interchange of ideas. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

Besides the pleasure derived from acquired knowledge, there lurks in the mind of man, and tinged with a shade of sadness, an unsatisfactory longing for something beyond the present, a striving towards regions yet unknown and unopened. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Samskrit is the unsurpassed zenith in the whole development of languages yet known to us. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The legislator should keep two things constantly before his eyes: 1. The pure theory developed to its minutest details; 2. The particular condition of actual things which he designs to reform. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Life, in all ranks and situations, is an outward occupation, an actual and active work. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

We cannot assume the injustice of any actions which only create offense, and especially as regards religion and morals. He who utters or does anything to wound the conscience and moral sense of others, may indeed act immorally; but, so long as he is not guilty of being importunate, he violates no right. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand - If it is to be done, it must be by studying Humboldt. ~ Charles Darwin

To behold, is not necessary to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

To inquire and to create; these are the grand centres around which all human pursuits revolve, or at least to these objects do they all more or less directly refer. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

During the first half of the present century we had an Alexander von Humboldt, who was able to scan the scientific knowledge of his time in its details, and to bring it within one vast generalization. At the present juncture, it is obviously very doubtful whether this task could be accomplished in a similar way, even by a mind with gifts so peculiarly suited for the purpose as Humboldt's was, and if all his time and work were devoted to the purpose. ~ Hermann Von Helmholtz

Even by means of our sorrows we belong to the eternal plan. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Humboldt's early biographer, F.A. Schwarzenberg, subtitled his life of Humboldt What May Be Accomplished in a Lifetime. He summarised the areas of his subject's extraordinary curiosity as follows: '1) The knowledge of the Earth and its inhabitants. 2) The discovery of the higher laws of nature, which govern the universe, men, animals, plants, minerals. 3) The discovery of new forms of life. 4) The discovery of territories hitherto but imperfectly known, and their various productions. 5)
The acquaintance with new species of the human race
their manners, their language and the historical traces of their culture.'
What may be accomplished in a lifetime
and seldom or never is. ~ Alain De Botton

I saw with regret, (and all scientific men have shared this feeling) that whilst the number of accurate instruments was daily increasing, we were still ignorant ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

We have not the remotest realistic inkling of a consciousness which is not self-consciousness. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Time is the most important thing in human life, for what is pleasure after the departure of time? and the most consolatory, since pain, when pain has passed, is nothing. Time is the wheel-track in which we roll on towards eternity, conducting us to the Incomprehensible. In its progress there is a ripening power, and it ripens us the more, and the more powerfully, when we duly estimate it. Listen to its voice, do not waste it, but regard it as the highest finite good, in which all finite things are resolved. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met. ~ Thomas Jefferson

All translating seems to me to be simply an attempt to accomplish an impossible task. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

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

True resignation, which always brings with it the confidence that unchangeable goodness will make even the disappointment of our hopes, and the contradictions of life, conducive to some benefit, casts a grave but tranquil light over the prospect of even a toilsome and troubled life. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Results are nothing; the energies which produce them and which again spring from them are everything. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

It is an absolutely vain endeavor to attempt to reconstruct or even comprehend the nature of a human being by simply knowing the forces which have acted upon him. However deeply we should like to penetrate, however close we seem to be drawing to truth, one unknown quantity eludes us: man's primordial energy, his original self, that personality which was given him with the gift of life itself. On it rests man's true freedom; it alone determines his real character. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue ... perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life, than on the nature of those events themselves. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The most dangerous worldviews are the worldviews of those who have never viewed the world. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

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

Providence certainly does not favor just certain individuals, but the deep wisdom of its counsel, instruction and ennoblement extends to all. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Insight into universal nature provides an intellectual delight and sense of freedom that no blows of fate and no evil can destroy. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

The price of apparent happiness and enjoyment is the neglect of the spontaneous active energies of the acting members. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

If it were not somewhat fanciful to suppose that every human excellence is presented, as it were, in one kind of being, we might believe that the whole treasure of morality and order is enshrined in the female character. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

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

It is resignation and contentment that are best calculated to lead us safely through life. Whoever has not sufficient power to endure privations, and even suffering, can never feel that he is armor proof against painful emotions,
nay, he must attribute to himself, or at least to the morbid sensitiveness of his nature, every disagreeable feeling he may suffer. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

I regard marriage as a sin and propagation of children as a crime. It is my conviction also that he is a fool, and still more a sinner, who takes upon himself the yoke of marriage - a fool, because he thereby throws away his freedom, without gaining a corresponding recompense; a sinner, because he gives life to children, without being able to give them the certainty of happiness. I despise humanity in all its strata; I foresee that our posterity will be far more unhappy than we are; and should not I be a sinner, if, in spite of this insight, I should take care to leave a posterity of unhappy beings behind me? The whole of life is the greatest insanity. And if for eighty years one strives and inquiries, still one is obliged finally to confess that he has striven for nothing and has found nothing. Did we at least know why we are in this world! But to the thinker, everything is and remains a riddle; and the greatest good luck is that of being born a flathead. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Happiness is so nonsynonymous with joy or pleasure that it is not infrequently sought and felt in grief and deprivation. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The best and noblest parts of man depend precious little on culture, education, and whatever else it is called. One can never have enough respect for true humanity as it is visible in the persons of the totally uneducated classes, and never enough humility if one sometimes believes one is superior to them. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible. ~ Alain De Botton

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

However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

If something possesses no capacity for activity whatever, it is nothing; it may be wholly penetrated, but it cannot be touched. Therefore passivity and reaction are everywhere equal. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

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

To judge a man means nothing other than to ask: What content does he give to the form of humanity? What concept should we have of humanity if he were its only representative? ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

It is almost more important how a person takes his fate than what it is. And the best way is with gratitude while trying to improve it for the good of others and themselves. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

This aspect of animated nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange and sad ... Here, in a fertile country, adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the power of man; we seem to be transported into a world different from that which gave us birth. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

All political arrangements, in that they have to bring a variety of widely-discordant interests into unity and harmony, necessarily occasion manifold collisions. From these collisions spring misproportions between men's desires and their powers; and from these, transgressions. The more active the State is, the greater is the number of these. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

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. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Collaboration operates through a process in which the successful intellectual achievements of one person arouse the intellectual passions and enthusiasms of others. ~ Alexander Von Humboldt

Language is the spiritual exhalation of the nation. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

It is usually more important how a man meets his fate than what it is. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

What does it mean to be truly educated?

I think I can do no better about answering the question of what it means to be truly educated than to go back to some of the classic views on the subject. For example the views expressed by the founder of the modern higher education system, Wilhelm von Humboldt, leading humanist, a figure of the enlightenment who wrote extensively on education and human development and argued, I think, kind of very plausibly, that the core principle and requirement of a fulfilled human being is the ability to inquire and create constructively independently without external controls.

To move to a modern counterpart, a leading physicist who talked right here [at MIT], used to tell his classes it's not important what we cover in the class, it's important what you discover.

To be truly educated from this point of view means to be in a position to inquire and to create on the basis of the resources available to you which you've come to appreciate and comprehend. To know where to look, to know how to formulate serious questions, to question a standard doctrine if that's appropriate, to find your own way, to shape the questions that are worth pursuing, and to develop the path to pursue them. That means knowing, understanding many things but also, much more important than what you have stored in your mind, to know where to look, how to look, how to question, how to challenge, how to proceed independently, to deal with the chal ~ Noam Chomsky

The inquiry into the proper aims and limits of State agency must be of the highest importance nay, that it is perhaps more vitally momentous than any other political question. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Even sleep is characteristic. How beautiful are children in their lovely innocence! how angel-like their blooming features! and how painful and anxious is the sleep of the guilty! ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

When you praise someone you call yourself his equal. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It is impossible to say how far the present value of money depends on its monetary employment and how far on its industrial employment. When the institution of money was first established, the industrial basis of the value of the precious metals may have preponderated; but with progress in the monetary organization of economic life the monetary employment has become more and more important. It is certain that nowadays the value of gold is largely supported by its monetary employment, and that its demonetization would affect its price in an overwhelming fashion. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

In Christ, for the first time, we see that in God himself there exists
within his inseparable unity
the distinction between the Father who gives and the Gift which is given (the Son), but only in the unity of the Holy Spirit. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Your messages I hear, but faith has not been given; The dearest child of Faith is Miracle. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Hildegard von Bingen conveys spiritual ecstasy, if we're talking of Western music. What bothers me about Western music is that it doesn't have an esoteric dimension in the way the music of the East has, whether it be Byzantine chant, the music of the Sufis, or Hindu music. ~ John Tavener

War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost limits. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

Only great and general battles can produce great results ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

Lamplight, console me till then, harbinger warm of the night. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Kindness is the golden thread that holds society together. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There are for man only two principles available for a mental grasp of reality, namely, those of teleology and causality. What cannot be brought under either of these categories is absolutely hidden to the human mind. An event not open to an interpretation by one of these two principles is for man inconceivable and mysterious. Change can be conceived as the outcome either of the operation of mechanistic causality or of purposeful behavior; for the human mind there is no third way available. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Hell is to be contemplated strictly as a matter which concerns me alone. As part of the spiritual life it belongs behind the 'closed door' of my own room. From the standpoint of living faith, I cannot fundamentally believe in anyone's damnation but my own; as far as my neighbor is concerned, the light of resurrection can never be so obscured that I would be allowed or obliged to stop hoping for him. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar