Hannah Arendt Quotes


Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom. Hannah Arendt Forgiveness 313
Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda. Hannah Arendt Propaganda 205
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous. Hannah Arendt Dangerous 198
The ultimate end of human acts is eudaimonia, happiness in the sense of living well, which all men desire; all acts are but different means chosen to arrive at it. Hannah Arendt Acts 134
Nothing we use or hear or touch can be expressed in words that equal what we are given by the senses. Hannah Arendt Words 129
Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history. Hannah Arendt Forgiveness 115
Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear. Hannah Arendt Uncategorized 109
Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence. Hannah Arendt Economics 109
Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise. Hannah Arendt Loyalty 102
Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but anti-political, perhaps the most powerful of all anti-political human forces. Hannah Arendt Love 100
Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx. Hannah Arendt Aristotle 92
War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford. Hannah Arendt Afford 91
The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. Hannah Arendt Fashion 89
Under conditions of tyranny it is far easer to act than to think. Hannah Arendt 89
Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one. Hannah Arendt Experience 88
The more dubious and uncertain an instrument violence has become in international relations, the more it has gained in reputation and appeal in domestic affairs, specifically in the matter of revolution. Hannah Arendt Violence 81
The Third World is not a reality but an ideology. Hannah Arendt Ideology 80
The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition. Hannah Arendt World 79
Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing. Hannah Arendt Against 79
The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error. Hannah Arendt Admit 79
There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil. Hannah Arendt Evil 75
Niemand hat das Recht zu gehorchen. Hannah Arendt Independence 74
Ideas, as distinguished from events, are never unprecedented. Hannah Arendt Ideas 73
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. Hannah Arendt Done 72
This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst expect the best and take what comes. Hannah Arendt best 71
Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity. Hannah Arendt Freedom 71
The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less... Hannah Arendt Learning 68
By its very nature the beautiful is isolated from everything else. From beauty no road leads to reality. Hannah Arendt beauty 68
We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for their abundance. Hannah Arendt Excess 63
To think and to be fully alive are the same. Hannah Arendt Ideals 61
Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of life. Hannah Arendt Culture 60
No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny. Hannah Arendt History 59
Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance. Hannah Arendt Power 58
Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning. Hannah Arendt Revolution 57
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. Hannah Arendt Nature 56
In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism. Hannah Arendt death 55
Fear is an emotion indispensable for survival. Hannah Arendt Fear 55
Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake. Hannah Arendt Courage 54
To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious. Hannah Arendt Age 49
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any. Hannah Arendt Education 48
Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being. Hannah Arendt Conversation 45
The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. Hannah Arendt Clear 45
Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible. Hannah Arendt Extent 44
Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject. Hannah Arendt Death 43
To be sure, nothing is more important to the integrity of the universities than a rigorously enforced divorce from war-oriented research and all connected enterprises. Hannah Arendt Education 41
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. Hannah Arendt Storytelling 40
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution. Hannah Arendt Revolution 40
The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade. Hannah Arendt Trouble 39
Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion and public debate, and where no opportunity for the forming of opinions exists, there may be moods Hannah Arendt Opinion 37
It is my contention that civil disobediences are nothing but the latest form of voluntary association, and that they are thus quite in tune with the oldest traditions of the country. Hannah Arendt Obedience 37

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