Quotes from Phenomenology of Spirit

“It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain which is supposed to conceal the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we go behind it ourselves, as much in order that we may see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“The anti-human, the merely animal, consists in staying within the sphere of feeling, and being able to communicate only at that level". (1807, § 69).”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“[T]he vanity of the contents” of individual experience is scrutable as an inessential trapping drawn into a matter by vested interests “…since it is at the same time the vanity of the self that knows itself to be vain”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one might say that the former is refuted by the latter; similarly, when the fruit appears, the blossom is shown up in its turn as a false manifestation of the plant, and the fruit now emerges as the truth of it instead.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“is—it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“It is not a very pleasing spectacle to observe uncultivated ignorance and crudity of mind, with neither form nor taste, without the capacity to concentrate its thoughts on an abstract proposition, still less on a connected statement of such propositions, confidently proclaiming itself to be intellectual freedom and”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“Die Wahrheit des Seins ist Wesen”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“Everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“Das Widermenschliche, das Tierische besteht darin, im Gefühle stehen zu bleiben und nur durch dieses sich mitteilen zu können.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“History, is a conscious, self-meditating process — Spirit emptied out into Time; but this externalization, this kenosis, is equally an externalization of itself; the negative is the negative of itself. This Becoming presents a slow-moving succession of Spirits, a gallery of images, each of which, endowed with all the riches of Spirit, moves thus slowly just because the Self has to penetrate and digest this entire wealth of its substance. As its fulfilment consists in perfectly knowing what it is, in knowing its substance, this knowing is that withdrawal into itself in which it abandons its outer existence and gives its existential shape over to recollection. Thus absorbed in itself, it is sunk in the night of its self-consciousness; but in that night its vanished outer existence is perserved, and this transformed existence — the former one, but now reborn of the Spirit's knowledge — is the new existence, a new world and a new shape of Spirit. In the immediacy of this new existence the Spirit has to start afresh to bring itself to maturity as if, for it, all that preceded were lost and it had learned nothing from the experience of the earlier Spirits. But recollection, the inwardizing, of that experience, has perserved it and is the inner-being, and in fact the higher form of the substance. So although to bring itself to maturity, it is none the less on a higher level that it starts. The realm of Spirits which is formed in this way in the outer world constitutes a succession in Time in which one Spirit relieved another of its charge and each took over the empire of the world from its predecessor.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“... por lo poco que el espíritu necesita para contentarse, puede medirse la extensión de lo que ha perdido.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“§10 . . . Such minds, when they give themselves up to the uncontrolled ferment of [the divine] substance, imagine that, by drawing a veil over self-consciousness and surrendering understanding they become the beloved of God to whom He gives wisdom in sleep; and hence what they in fact receive, and bring to birth in their sleep, is nothing but dreams.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

“Wahrheit heißt Übereinstimmung des Begriffs mit seiner Wirklichkeit.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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