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The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.

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
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Certainty
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Happens
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Probability
Always
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Laws
Overwhelming
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Statistical
Amount
Appears
Guise
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Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
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Luck serves ... as rationalization for every people that is not master of its own destiny.
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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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the rule of Nobody ... is what the political form known as bureaucracy truly is.
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We are free to change the world and start something new in it.
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Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.
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Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.
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Power is actualized only when word and deed have not parted company.
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Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.
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Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future. Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate.
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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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Kant ... was also quite aware that the urgent need of reason is both different from and more than mere quest and desire for knowledge. Hence, the distinguishing of the two faculties, reason and intellect, coincides with a distinction between two altogether different mental activities, thinking and knowing.
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the insight that peace is the end of war, and that therefore a war is the preparation for peace, is at least as old as Aristotle, and the pretense that the aim of an armament race is to guard the peace is even older, namely as old as the discovery of propaganda lies.
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Bureaucracy, the rule of nobody.
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The true dividing line between people is whether they are capable of being in love with their destiny.
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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.
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In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.
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