Hannah Arendt Quotes
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... the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction betweenour present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority.
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Even though we have lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to subsume the particular, a being whose essence is a beginning may have enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality.
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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.
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Every thought is strictly speaking an after-thought.
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It is obvious: if you do not accept something that assumes the form of ‘destiny,’ you not only change its ‘natural laws’ but also the laws of the enemy playing the role of fate.
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The end of rebellion is liberation, while the end of revolution is the foundation of freedom.
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I'm more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.
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To think and to be fully alive are the same.
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Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.
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It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.
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It is in the nature of a group and its power to turn against independence, the property of individual strength.
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In politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy.
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We all carry fault within.
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Men in plural […] can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.
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When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.
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And the distinction between violent and non-violent action is that the former is exclusively bent upon the destruction of the old, and the latter is chiefly concerned with the establishment of something new.
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It interrupts any doing, any ordinary activities, no matter what they happen to be. All thinking demands a stop-and-think.
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Entirely new concepts are very rare in politics.
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Plurality of languages: [...] It is crucial 1. that there are many languages and that they differ not only in vocabulary, but also in grammar, and so in mode of thought and 2. that all languages are learnable.
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If it is true ... that no one has a life worth thinking about whose life story cannot be told, does it not then follow that life could be, even ought to be, lived as a story, that what one has to do in life is to make the story come true?
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Fear is an emotion indispensable for survival.
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One must think with the body and the soul or not think at all.
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The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.
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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.