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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.

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
Left
Walk
Resolutions
Also
Walks
Inaction
Take
Decision
Bind
Always
Morning
Undone
Actually
Resolution
Freedom
Afternoon
Future
Bed
Touchstone
Free
Highest
Touchstones

More quotes by Hannah Arendt

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The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
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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.
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The emotions I feel are no more meant to be shown in their unadulterated state than the inner organs by which we live.
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The presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves.
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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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Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.
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... the space left to freedom is very small.ends are inherent in human nature and the same for all.
Hannah Arendt
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Bureaucracy, the rule of nobody.
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the rule of Nobody ... is what the political form known as bureaucracy truly is.
Hannah Arendt
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Since one cannot educate adults, the word education has an evil sound in politics there is a pretense of education, when the real purpose is coercion without the use of force.
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In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.
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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.
Hannah Arendt
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Conscience is the anticipation of the fellow who awaits you if and when you come home.
Hannah Arendt
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Power is actualized only when word and deed have not parted company.
Hannah Arendt
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Imperialism was born when the ruling class in capitalist production came up against national limits to its economic expansion.
Hannah Arendt
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every thought is strictly speaking an after-thought.
Hannah Arendt
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Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.
Hannah Arendt
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Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
Hannah Arendt
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Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.
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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