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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

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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
Facts
Causes
Existence
Versus
Politics
Tyranny
Freedom
Determined
Fact
Ancient
Peace
Civilization
History
Beginning
Left
Cause

More quotes by Hannah Arendt

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Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.
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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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Since one cannot educate adults, the word education has an evil sound in politics there is a pretense of education, when the real purpose is coercion without the use of force.
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Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.
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I've begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world... Out of gratitude, I want to call my book on political theories Amor Mundi .
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The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The basic fallacy , taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.
Hannah Arendt
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Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable.
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Rage is by no means an automatic reaction to misery and suffering as such no one reacts with rage to an incurable disease or to an earthquake or, for that matter, to social conditions that seem to be unchangeable. Only where there is reason to suspect that conditions could be changed and are not does rage arise.
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Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.
Hannah Arendt
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Equality...is the result of human organization. We are not born equal.
Hannah Arendt
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No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.
Hannah Arendt
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power can be thought of as the never-ending, self-feeding motor of all political action that corresponds to the legendary unending accumulation of money that begets money.
Hannah Arendt
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A functionary, when he really is nothing more than a functionary, is really a very dangerous gentleman.
Hannah Arendt
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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
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If we don't know our own history, we are deemed to live it.
Hannah Arendt
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The business of thinking ... undoes every morning what it had finished the night before.
Hannah Arendt
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Mathematics, the non-empirical science par excellence . . . the science of sciences, delivering the key to those laws of nature and the universe which are concealed by appearances.
Hannah Arendt
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The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
Hannah Arendt
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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
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thinking beings have an urge to speak, speaking beings have an urge to think.
Hannah Arendt