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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?

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
Men
Conditions
Attract
Thinking
Results
Regardless
Attention
Specific
Whatever
Content
Evil
Pass
Happens
Activity
Come
Habit
Abstain
Make
Among
Examining

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The true dividing line between people is whether they are capable of being in love with their destiny.
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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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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.
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Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.
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All political institutions are manifestations and materializations of power they petrify and decay as soon as the living power of the people ceases to uphold them.
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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.
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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.
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The Third World is not a reality but an ideology.
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Conscience is the anticipation of the fellow who awaits you if and when you come home.
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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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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.
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His [Marx's] most explosive and indeed most original contribution to the cause of revolution was that he interpreted the compelling needs of mass poverty in political terms as an uprising, not for the sake of bread or wealth, but for the sake of freedom as well.
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Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it.
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Every thought is an afterthought.
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Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.
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The conviction that everything that happens on earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces.
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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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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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Legends have always played a powerful role in the making of history. ... Without ever relating facts reliably, yet always expressing their true significance, they offered a truth beyond realities, a remembrance beyond memories.
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It is quite gratifying to feel guilty if you haven't done anything wrong: how noble! Whereas it is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent.
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