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Quote by 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.”

Quote by Wilhelm von Humboldt

Author

Wilhelm von Humboldt

German philosopher, educator, and linguist, known as the 'Father of Educational Reform'. Wilhelm von Humboldt was born on June 22, 1767, and died on April 8, 1835. He had profound insights into education, language, and culture, which had a lasting impact on the world. more

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“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.”

Men Able Action Virtue Citizens Selfish Charm Savages Inviting

Author: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.”

Men States Political Desire Interest Numbers Greater Spring Harmony Unity Active Variety Occasions Arrangements Collision Transgression Manifold

Author:Wilhelm von Humboldt

“In every remodelling of the present, the existing condition of things must be supplanted by a new one. Now every variety of circumstances in which men find themselves, every object which surrounds them, communicates a definite form and impress to their internal nature. This form is not such that it can change and adapt itself to any other a man may choose to receive; and the end is foiled, while the power is destroyed, when we attempt to impose upon that which is already stamped in the soul a form which disagrees with it.”

Men May Soul Ends Form Conditions Objects Circumstances Communicate Destroyed Variety Internals Surround Disagree Impress Definite

Author: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.”

Should Two Eye Conditions Design Particular Theory Pure Details Reform His Eyes Two Things Legislators

Author:Wilhelm von Humboldt

“I could live in the woods with thee in sight, Where never should human foot intrude: Or with thee find light in the darkest night, And a social crowd in solitude.”

Should Humans Light Night Social Feet Solitude Sight Crowds Woods Thee

Author:Tibullus

“The key problem is to find out why that sector of society of the past, which I would not hesitate to call capitalist, should have lived as if in a bell jar, cut off from the rest; why was it not able to expand and conquer the whole of society?... [Why was it that] a significant rate of capital formation was possible only in certain sectors and not in the whole market economy of the time?”

Source: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The wheels of commerce

“For a century, the Arabs tribes gave Islam the first of these victories. Then the rough mountain peoples of North Africa, the Berbers, helped it to conquer Spain and organize Fatimid Egypt.”

Firsts Century Victory Mountain Islam Conquer Rough Organize Tribes Egypt Spain North Africa

Book:A History of Civilizations

Source: A History of Civilizations

“I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble.”

People Double Entendre

Author:Nigella Lawson

“While I am sure there are a number of women who secretly wonder whether they are lesbian, most simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women.”

Way Sex Numbers Wonder Fantasy Defining Exclusive Having Sex

Author:Nigella Lawson

“It's true that I wouldn't have written the first book had my sister and mother been alive. It was my way of continuing our conversation. It's also this Jewish thing of naming and remembering people, and I think there is a sense of keeping that side of life going.”

People Thinking Way Firsts Book Remember Mother Sides Alive Written Conversation My Way My Sister Continuing Sisters And Mothers

Author:Nigella Lawson