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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.
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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More quotes by Hannah Arendt
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.
Hannah Arendt
The climax of terror is reached when the police state begins to devour its own children, when yesterday's executioner becomes today's victim.
Hannah Arendt
thinking beings have an urge to speak, speaking beings have an urge to think.
Hannah Arendt
The true dividing line between people is whether they are capable of being in love with their destiny.
Hannah Arendt
[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.
Hannah Arendt
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.
Hannah Arendt
Luck serves ... as rationalization for every people that is not master of its own destiny.
Hannah Arendt
Rage is by no means an automatic reaction to misery and suffering as such no one reacts with rage to an incurable disease or to an earthquake or, for that matter, to social conditions that seem to be unchangeable. Only where there is reason to suspect that conditions could be changed and are not does rage arise.
Hannah Arendt
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.
Hannah Arendt
The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality.
Hannah Arendt
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.
Hannah Arendt
For excellence, the presence of others is always required.
Hannah Arendt
To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin... to set something into motion.
Hannah Arendt
In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.
Hannah Arendt
Basically we are always educating for a world that is or is becoming out of joint, for this is the basic human situation, in which the world is created by mortal hands to serve mortals for a limited time as home.
Hannah Arendt
The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility he can never admit an error.
Hannah Arendt
the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.
Hannah Arendt
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
Hannah Arendt
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.
Hannah Arendt
A functionary, when he really is nothing more than a functionary, is really a very dangerous gentleman.
Hannah Arendt