18 Quotes by Helmuth Plessner
- Author Helmuth Plessner
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If we proceed like the child does with the puppy, if we examine what is hidden in things and persons, in everything that is stimulating in this colorful world, then we will uncover nothing more than that kind of atomized sawdust with which 'science' for a long time has been feeding those hungry for knowledge. Everything real looked at in the light disappoints. The forms lose their shine, color, and aroma, like a fruit that someone has grasped too strongly.
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- Author Helmuth Plessner
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We do not sufficiently respect that anti-mephistoclean force which, like the mephistoclean one, threatens the balance of life: a force that constantly wishes what is good and constantly produces what is evil.
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- Author Helmuth Plessner
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The devil, cheated of his legitimate portion of human life, avenges itself by taking over all of life.
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Dignity concerns at all times the person taken in his entirety - the unity of what lies inside and outside - and describes the ideal constitution to which one strives, but which is only too infrequently reached. The higher the person wants to reach, the harder it is for him to reach this idea; for, with the one-sidedness that results from concentration on a great theme he tears open a crevice between himself and his ambition.
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We want ourselves to be seen and to have been seen as we are; and we want just as much to veil ourselves and remain unknown, for behind every determination of our being lies dormant the unspoken possibility of being different.
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All life with others carries the germ of the capacity of dissolution because souls are more than what they factually are.
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The soul suffers from nothing more than from not being understood. This is, though, its fate elicited by its own nature.
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Between the two poles of community - blood and ideal - stretches the enormous and, to a certain degree, indeterminate public sphere, which is not quite comprehensible in either political or economic terms and where the entire risk of the humiliation of human dignity is given.
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- Author Helmuth Plessner
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The more ideology becomes pacifistic, the more militaristic become the ideologists.
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