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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.

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
Power
Foreign
May
Although
Firsts
Institutions
First
Rule
Successfully
People
National
Destroys
Stay
Antiwar
Peace
Peoples
War
Tyranny

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Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.
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Ideas, as distinguished from events, are never unprecedented.
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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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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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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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Where all are guilty, no one is confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.
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When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.
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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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Plurality of languages: [...] It is crucial 1. that there are many languages and that they differ not only in vocabulary, but also in grammar, and so in mode of thought and 2. that all languages are learnable.
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Luck serves ... as rationalization for every people that is not master of its own destiny.
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Every thought is an afterthought.
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Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
Hannah Arendt
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Entirely new concepts are very rare in politics.
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There are no parallels to the life of the concentration camps. All seeming parallels create confusion and distract attention from what is essential. Forced labor in prisons and penal colonies, banishment, slavery, all seem for a moment to offer helpful comparisons, but on closer examination lead nowhere.
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thinking beings have an urge to speak, speaking beings have an urge to think.
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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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Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
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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.
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The business of thinking ... undoes every morning what it had finished the night before.
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