Wilhelm von Humboldt (1769–1859,) fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand, Freiherr (baron) von Humboldt, was a German educator, diplomat, political theorist, and philologist. He reformed the Prussian school system and established the University of Berlin. He was also influential in developing the science of comparative philology. He was the elder brother of the polymath, linguist, and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.
Born in Potsdam, Humboldt was educated at Frankfurt and Göttingen. He initially traveled to Europe and then became a diplomat. He combined the general scholarly interests of his time with a particular concern for political philosophy. In his major work of the German Enlightenment, The Limits of State Action (written 1791; pub. 1851; tr. 1969,) he argued that the singular purpose of the state is to protect the lives and property of its citizens.
In 1801, Humboldt became a Prussian Minister at Rome and was a patron of young artists and scientists. He returned to Prussia 1808 to become First Minister of Education and founded the University of Berlin, which was named after him in 1945. In 1810, Humboldt went to Vienna as the minister plenipotentiary and to London in 1817. He was the first to study the Basque language systematically and worked on the languages of the East and the South Sea Islands.
Humboldt’s significant contribution was the notion that language is a pursuit of the character and structure of which express the culture and individuality of the speaker, and he asserted that every individual perceives the world primarily through the medium of language. He thus presaged ethnolinguistics, which surveys the interrelationship of language and cultural behavior.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Wilhelm 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 renews its strength, and, without reference to joy or sorrow, follows eternal laws which are imposed by a higher power.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt
Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt
Topics: Freedom
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
Topics: Work
It is continued temperance which sustains the body for the longest period of time, and which most surely preserves it free from sickness.
—Wilhelm 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
Topics: Nature
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 toward regions yet unknown and unopened.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt
Topics: Desires
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
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
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
Topics: Women
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
How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt
Topics: Success, Success & Failure, Fate
Providence certainly does not favor just certain individuals, but the deep wisdom of its counsel, instruction and ennoblement extends to all.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt
Topics: God
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
Topics: Solitude
The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt
Topics: Government
If it were possible to make an accurate calculation of the evils which police regulations occasion, and of those which they prevent, the number of the former would, in all cases, exceed that of the latter.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt
Topics: Police
True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind and exercise of the body; the two are ever united.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt
It is almost more important how a person takes his fate than what it is.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt
Topics: Acceptance
In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a thorough will to do it. Man can do everything with himself, but he must not attempt to do too much with others.
—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
Topics: Morality, Morals
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
Topics: Possessions
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
Topics: Old Age
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
Topics: War
The sorrow which calls for help and comfort is not the greatest, nor does it come from the depths of the heart.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt
Topics: Sorrow
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
Topics: Happiness, Attitude, Life
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
Topics: Man
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
Topics: Revolution
It is worthy of special remark that 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.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt
Topics: Duty, Happiness
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