7 Quotes by Hannah Arendt about past

  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    Sofern Vergangenheit als Tradition überliefert ist, hat sie Autorität; sofern Autorität sich geschichtlich darstellt, wird sie zur Tradition. Walter Benjamin wusste, dass Traditionsbruch und Autoritätsverlust irreperabel waren, und zog daraus den Schluss, neue Wege für den Umgang mit der Vergangenheit zu suchen.

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  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.

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  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.

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  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    The cultural treasures of the past, believed to be dead, are being made to speak, in the course of which it turns out that they propose things altogether different than what had been thought.

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  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche are for us like guideposts to a past which has lost its significance.

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  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    Culture is being threatened when all worldly objects and things, produced by the present or the past, are treated as mere functions for the life process of society, as though they are there only to fulfill some need, and for this functionalization it is almost irrelevant whether the needs in question are of a high or a low order.

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  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    ... we may remember what the Romansthought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.

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