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Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.

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
Virtue
Truthfulness
Lying
Dealings
Political
Counted
Always
Regarded
Never
Virtues
Tools
Lies
Among
Justifiable

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One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.
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It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.
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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.
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The climax of terror is reached when the police state begins to devour its own children, when yesterday's executioner becomes today's victim.
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Fear is an emotion indispensable for survival.
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It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, because you can remain the friend of the sufferer who would want to be the friend of and have to live together with a murderer? Not even another murderer.
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Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.
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Metaphysical fallacies contain the only clues we have to what thinking means to those who engage in it.
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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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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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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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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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Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse.
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Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.
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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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For excellence, the presence of others is always required.
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Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.
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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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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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Ideas, as distinguished from events, are never unprecedented.
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