“The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.”

Αs translated by William Smith, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889), Vol. I, Lecture IV, p. 188.
The Vocation of the Scholar (1794)
Context: Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also. And he who hinders this, —what character does he assume towards his age and posterity? Louder than with a thousand voices, by his actions he proclaims into the deafened ear of the world present and to come —"As long as I live at least, the men around me shall not become wiser or better; — for in their progress I too, notwithstanding all my efforts to the contrary, should be dragged forward in some direction; and this I detest I will not become more enlightened, — I will not become nobler. Darkness and perversion are my elements, and I will summon all my powers together that I may not be dislodged from them."

2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)

Source: The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2

Also quoted in The Heart of Goodness : A Radiant Path to a Richer, Fuller Life (1999) by Jo Ann Larsen
Living Under Tension (1941)
Context: No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined. One of the widest gaps in human experience is the gap between what we say we want to be and our willingness to discipline ourselves to get there.

Reflections on Gandhi (1949)
Source: In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

Bush, Stephen F., Keynote Speech, First IEEE International Conference on Communications 2012 Workshop on Telecommunications: From Research to Standards July 18, 2012.

What is Art? (1897)
Context: Humanity unceasingly strives forward from a lower, more partial and obscure understanding of life to one more general and more lucid. And in this, as in every movement, there are leaders — those who have understood the meaning of life more clearly than others — and of those advanced men there is always one who has in his words and life, manifested this meaning more clearly, accessibly, and strongly than others. This man's expression … with those superstitions, traditions, and ceremonies which usually form around the memory of such a man, is what is called a religion. Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension of life … within a given age in a given society … a basis for evaluating human sentiments. If feelings bring people nearer to the religion's ideal … they are good, if these estrange them from it, and oppose it, they are bad.

Source: Slouching Towards Bethlehem