The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.
Interpretation
This quote speaks to the idea that those in power often exploit the majority rather than serving them.
Hegel's quote suggests that a small group of individuals often take on the role of representatives or leaders, but in reality, they may act selfishly and exploit the larger population they claim to represent. This reflects a critical view of power dynamics and the potential for corruption among those who hold authority.
In practice
In a discussion about political representation, one might quote Hegel to highlight the risks of concentrated power.
The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal.
The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.
Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.
Every idea, extended into infinity, becomes its own opposite.
If we go on to cast a look at the fate of these World-Historical persons, whose vocation it was to be the agents of the World-Spirit, we shall find it to have been no happy one. They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was labour and trouble; their whole nature was nought else but their master—passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty hulls from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are murdered, like Caesar.
When individuals and nations have once got in their heads the abstract concept of full-blown liberty, there is nothing like it in its uncontrollable strength.
Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.
A great safeguard is the entire faith, the true faith, in which neither anything whatever can be added by anyone nor anything taken away; for, unless faith be one, it is not the faith.
My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.
This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.
Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch.
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