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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

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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
Commitment
Promise
Humanly
Possible
Ordering
Future
Uniquely
Making
Reliable
Human
Predictable
Humans
Promises
Way
Extent

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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.
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Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.
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The totalitarian attempt at global conquest and total domination has been the destructive way out of all impasses. Its victory may coincide with the destruction of humanity wherever it has ruled, it has begun to destroy the essence of man.
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The conflict between art and politics... cannot and must not be solved.
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Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
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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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Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
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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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every thought is strictly speaking an after-thought.
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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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Thought and action must never part company.
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Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing?
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Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse.
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With the rise of Christianity, faith replaced thought as the bringer of immortality.
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It is a secret from nobody that the famous random event is most likely to arise from those parts of the world where the old adageThere is no alternative to victory retains a high degree of plausibility.
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We are free to change the world and start something new in it.
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Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up.
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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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Men in plural […] can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.
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Absence of thought is indeed a powerful factor in human affairs, statistically speaking the most powerful, not just in the conduct of the many but in the conduct of all.
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