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The concept of unlimited expansion that alone can fulfill the hope for unlimited accumulation of capital, and brings about the aimless accumulation of power, makes the foundation of new political bodies - which up to the era of imperialism always had been the upshot of conquest - well-nigh impossible.
Hannah Arendt -
Thinking does not lead to truth; truth is the beginning of thought.
Hannah Arendt
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Jefferson, though the secret vote was still unknown at the time had at least a foreboding of how dangerous it might be to allow the people to share a public power without providing them at the same time with more public space than the ballot box and with more opportunity to make their voices heard in public than on election day. What he perceived to be the mortal danger to the republic was that the Constitution had given all power to the citizens, without giving them the opportunity of being citizens and of acting as citizens.
Hannah Arendt -
A functionary, when he really is nothing more than a functionary, is really a very dangerous gentleman.
Hannah Arendt -
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
Hannah Arendt -
With the rise of Christianity, faith replaced thought as the bringer of immortality.
Hannah Arendt -
Hitler never intended to defend ‘the West’ against Bolshevism but always remained ready to join ‘the Reds’ for the destruction of the West, even in the middle of the struggle against Soviet Russia.
Hannah Arendt -
To speak of the impotence of power is no longer a witty paradox.
Hannah Arendt
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To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin... to set something into motion.
Hannah Arendt -
What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing.
Hannah Arendt -
Well, demonization itself can help ... to provide an alibi. You succumb to the Devil incarnate, and as a result you're not guilty yourself.
Hannah Arendt -
If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to 'demand' its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.
Hannah Arendt -
You think that you can judge what's good or evil from whether you enjoy doing it or not. You think that evil is what always appears in the form of a temptation, while good is what you never spontaneously want to do. I think this is all total rubbish, if you don't mind my saying so.
Hannah Arendt -
Exactly for the sake of what is new and revolutionary in every child, education must be conservative; it must preserve this newness and introduce it as a new thing into an old world.
Hannah Arendt
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Thought ... is still possible, and no doubt actual, wherever men live under the conditions of political freedom. Unfortunately ... no other human capacity is so vulnerable, and it is in fact far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.
Hannah Arendt -
If this practice [of totalitarianism] is compared with […] [the desert] of tyranny, it seems as if a way had been found to set the desert itself in motion, to let loose a sand storm that could cover all parts of the inhabited earth. The conditions under which we exist today in the field of politics are indeed threatened by these devastating sand storms.
Hannah Arendt -
It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.
Hannah Arendt -
Imperialism was born when the ruling class in capitalist production came up against national limits to its economic expansion.
Hannah Arendt -
To think and to be fully alive are the same.
Hannah Arendt -
[About Eichmann:] It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us - the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.
Hannah Arendt
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Thought and action must never part company.
Hannah Arendt -
Every thought is strictly speaking an after-thought.
Hannah Arendt -
Psychologically speaking, one may say that the hypocrite is too ambitious; not only does he want to appear virtuous before others, he wants to convince himself.
Hannah Arendt -
The end of rebellion is liberation, while the end of revolution is the foundation of freedom.
Hannah Arendt