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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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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
Problem
Revolutions
Confront
Inevitably
Directly
Revolution
Beginning
Events
Political

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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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To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious.
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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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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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The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility he can never admit an error.
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Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.
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The blessing of life as a wholecan never be found in work.
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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.
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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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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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While strength is the natural quality of an individual seen in isolation, power springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse.
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Entirely new concepts are very rare in politics.
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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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The concept of unlimited expansion that alone can fulfill the hope for unlimited accumulation of capital, and brings about the aimless accumulation of power, makes the foundation of new political bodies - which up to the era of imperialism always had been the upshot of conquest - well-nigh impossible.
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[About Eichmann:] It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us - the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.
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For no matter what learned scientists may say, race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of man but his unnatural death.
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Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse.
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Every thought is an afterthought.
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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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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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