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Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

Hannah Arendt

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Hannah Arendt
Age: 69 †
Born: 1906
Born: October 14
Died: 1975
Died: December 4
Author
Essayist
Historian
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Political Theorist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Hanover
Germany
Johanna Hannah Arendt
Johanna Hannah Cohn Arendt
Hannah Arendt Bluecher
Hanna Arendt
Johanna Arendt
Women
Think
Thinking
Tyrants
Tyranny
Conditions
Easier
Action

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The good things in history are usually of very short duration, but afterward have a decisive influence on what happens over long periods of time.
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Basically we are always educating for a world that is or is becoming out of joint, for this is the basic human situation, in which the world is created by mortal hands to serve mortals for a limited time as home.
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His [Marx's] most explosive and indeed most original contribution to the cause of revolution was that he interpreted the compelling needs of mass poverty in political terms as an uprising, not for the sake of bread or wealth, but for the sake of freedom as well.
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Kant ... discovered the scandal of reason, that is the fact that our mind is not capable of certain and verifiable knowledge regarding matters and questions that it nevertheless cannot help thinking about.
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the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.
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By its very nature the beautiful is isolated from everything else. From beauty no road leads to reality.
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Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.
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Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.
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Action painting has to do with self-creation or self-definition or self-transcendence but this dissociates it from self-expression, which assumes the acceptance of the ego as it is, with its wound and its magic.
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In the era of imperialism, businessmen became politicians and were acclaimed as statesmen, while statesmen were taken seriously only if they talked the language of succcessful businessmen.
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A functionary, when he really is nothing more than a functionary, is really a very dangerous gentleman.
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It belongs among the refinements of totalitarian government in our century that they don't permit their opponents to die a great, dramatic martyr's death for their convictions.
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Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.
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Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.
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Men always want to be terribly influential, but I see that as somewhat external. Do I imagine myself being influential? No. I want to understand. And if others understand--in the same sense that I have understood--that gives me a sense of satisfaction, like feeling at home.
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Kant ... stated that he had found it necessary to deny knowledge ... to make room for faith, but all he had denied was knowledge of things that are unknowable, and he had not made room for faith but for thought.
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Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse.
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To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin... to set something into motion.
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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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Although tyranny...may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.
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