Johann Gottfried HerderThinkers

Anthropology is a kind of copernican turn in philosophy.

Genius is a gathering of natural powers that come out of the hands of nature and must go out ahead of taste, before taste can come to be.

History is the crooked road from diversity to unity, from fortuitous accidents of change to the purposeful continuity of human activity.

Jesus Christ is, in the noblest and most perfect sense, the realized ideal of humanity.

Language is originally imitations of the cries of beasts and birds. This is the 'bow-wow' theory of language.

Language is the organ of thought.

Man is a central creature between the animals, that is to say, the most perfect form, which unites the traits of all in the most complete epitome.

Political participation is a political form which, though far less efficient and far less orderly than enlightened despotism, is still unhesitingly preferred.

Thought is dependent on and bounded by language.

Zeitgeist is a mode into which a historian must enter in order to 'feel himself into everything'. It involves the recognition that each event must be evaluated in its own right, since it carries its validity within itself and no event, therefore, should merely be seen as a path to ends beyond itself.