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There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn’t know what his contemporaries are.

— Friedrich Schlegel

Es giebt keine Selbstkenntniss als die historische. Niemand weiss was er ist, wer nicht weiss was seine Genossen sind.

Original text (German)

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Notes from Wikiquote

“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 139

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History

More quotes by Friedrich Schlegel

Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.

Expect nothing more from philosophy than a voice, language and grammar of the instinct for Godliness that lies at its origin, and, essentially, is philosophy itself.

To live classically and to realize antiquity practically within oneself is the summit and goal of philology.

There are people with whom everything they consider a means turns mysteriously into an end.

Morality has always had a difficult time of it; utility and legality even begrudge the fact of its existence.

All Friedrich Schlegel quotes →

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Friedrich Schlegel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.