Quote

It belongs among the refinements of totalitarian government in our century that they don't permit their opponents to die a great, dramatic martyr's death for their convictions.

Hannah Arendt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Great
Opponents
Refinements
Dramatic
Totalitarianism
Conviction
Totalitarian
Among
Refinement
Century
Martyr
Dies
Convictions
Death
Permit
Government
Belongs

More quotes by Hannah Arendt

Image
Action painting has to do with self-creation or self-definition or self-transcendence but this dissociates it from self-expression, which assumes the acceptance of the ego as it is, with its wound and its magic.
Hannah Arendt
Image
What will happen once the authentic mass man takes over, we do not know yet, although it may be a fair guess that he will have more in common with the meticulous, calculated correctness of Himmler than with the hysterical fanaticism of Hitler, will more resemble the stubborn dullness of Molotov than the sensual vindictive cruelty of Stalin.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.
Hannah Arendt
Image
When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.
Hannah Arendt
Image
The emotions I feel are no more meant to be shown in their unadulterated state than the inner organs by which we live.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Freedom from labor itself is not new it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Every thought is an afterthought.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Luck serves ... as rationalization for every people that is not master of its own destiny.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Absence of thought is indeed a powerful factor in human affairs, statistically speaking the most powerful, not just in the conduct of the many but in the conduct of all.
Hannah Arendt
Image
the touchstone of a free act - from the decision to get out of bed in the morning or take a walk in the afternoon to the highest resolutions by which we bind ourselves for the future - is always that we know that we could also have left undone what we actually did.
Hannah Arendt
Image
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.
Hannah Arendt
Image
The cultural treasures of the past, believed to be dead, are being made to speak, in the course of which it turns out that they propose things altogether different than what had been thought.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.
Hannah Arendt
Image
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.
Hannah Arendt
Image
The true dividing line between people is whether they are capable of being in love with their destiny.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Nobody is the author or producer of his own life story ... somebody began it and is its subject in the twofold sense, namely, its actor and sufferer ... but nobody is the author.
Hannah Arendt
Image
With the rise of Christianity, faith replaced thought as the bringer of immortality.
Hannah Arendt
Image
where everybody is guilty, nobody is.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Even though we have lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to subsume the particular, a being whose essence is a beginning may have enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality.
Hannah Arendt
Image
The ultimate end of human acts is eudaimonia, happiness in the sense of living well, which all men desire all acts are but different means chosen to arrive at it.
Hannah Arendt