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"Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr (Baron) von Hardenberg (May 2, 1772 - March 25, 1801), an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism."

"Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr (Baron) von Hardenberg (1772-1801), called Friedrich von Hardenberg. The death in 1797 of his young fiancé, Sophie von Kühn, led him to write Hymnen an die Nacht (Hymns to the Night), a set of six prose and verse lyrics first published in 1800 in Athenaeum, a literary magazine edited by August Wilhelm Schlegel and his brother Friedrich Schlegel. Seven months after the publication of Hymns to the Night, Novalis died of tuberculosis, the same disease that had claimed his fiancé.

"Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?" (German: "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?") is the title of a 1784 essay by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. In the December 1784 publication of the Berlinische Monatsschrift (Berlin Monthly), edited by Friedrich Gedike and Johann Erich Biester, Kant replied to the question posed a year earlier by the Reverend Johann Friedrich Zöllner, who was also an official in the Prussian government. Zöllner's question was addressed to a broad intellectual public, in reply to Biester's essay entitled: "Proposal, not to engage the clergy any longer when marriages are conducted" (April 1783) and a number of leading intellectuals replied with essays, of which Kant's is the most famous and has had the most impact. Kant's opening paragraph of the essay is a much-cited definition of a lack of Enlightenment as people's inability to think for themselves due not to their lack of intellect, but lack of courage.

The pathos of death is this, that when the days of one's life are ended, those days that were so crowded with business and felt so heavy in their passing, what remains of one in memory should usually be so slight a thing. The phantom of an attitude, the echo of a certain mode of thought, a few pages of print, some invention, or some victory we gained in a brief critical hour, are all that can survive the best of us. It is as if the whole of a man's significance had now shrunk into the phantom of an attitude, into a mere musical note or phrase suggestive of his singularity — happy are those whose singularity gives a note so clear as to be victorious over the inevitable pity of such a diminution and abridgement.

"The Scarlet Letter published in 1850, is a Gothic American romance novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne; generally considered to be his masterpiece. Set in Puritan New England (specifically Boston) in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery, refuses to name the father, and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout, Hawthorne explores the issues of grace, legalism, and guilt.

"Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher. He is most famous for his work The World as Will and Idea.

The book of history is subject to numerous interpretations. Two wholly opposed points of view are evident. One group sees in all earthly things nothing but a wretched cycle. In the life of peoples like in that of individuals, and in organic nature in general, they see growth, flowering, decay, and death; spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Their's is the slogan: "There is nothing new under the sun" even this slogan being no longer new since some two thousand years ago the king of the Orient had murmured it.

"A Gentle Spirit, sometimes also translated as A Gentle Creature, is a short story written by Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1876. The piece comes with the subtitle of "A Fantastic Story," and it chronicles the relationship between a pawnbroker and a girl that frequents his shop."

Excerpt from "The Ballot or the Bullet" speech by Malcolm X.

10:42 minutes (14.73 MB)

"The Federalist Papers (correctly known as The Federalist) are a series of 85 articles advocating the ratification of the United States Constitution. Seventy-seven of the essays were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October 1787 and August 1788. A compilation of these and eight others, called The Federalist, was published in 1788 by J. and A. M’Lean.

The Federalist Papers serve as a primary source for interpretation of the Constitution, as they outline the philosophy and motivation of the proposed system of government. The authors of the Federalist Papers wanted to both influence the vote in favor of ratification and shape future interpretations of the Constitution. According to historian Richard Morris, they are an "incomparable exposition of the Constitution, a classic in political science unsurpassed in both breadth and depth by the product of any later American writer."