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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.

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
Long
Decisive
Good
Duration
Things
Periods
Time
Short
Usually
Influence
History
Happens
Afterward

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To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin... to set something into motion.
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The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility he can never admit an error.
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Ideas, as distinguished from events, are never unprecedented.
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Kant ... discovered the scandal of reason, that is the fact that our mind is not capable of certain and verifiable knowledge regarding matters and questions that it nevertheless cannot help thinking about.
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The concept of unlimited expansion that alone can fulfill the hope for unlimited accumulation of capital, and brings about the aimless accumulation of power, makes the foundation of new political bodies - which up to the era of imperialism always had been the upshot of conquest - well-nigh impossible.
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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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Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
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every political structure, new or old, left to itself develops stabilizing forces which stand in the way of constant transformation and expansion. Therefore all political bodies appear to be temporary obstacles when they are seen as part of an eternal stream of growing power.
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They must remember that they are constantly on the run, and that the world's reality is actually expressed by their escape.
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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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Fear is an emotion indispensable for survival.
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Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.
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Luck serves ... as rationalization for every people that is not master of its own destiny.
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Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
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The conflict between art and politics... cannot and must not be solved.
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Psychologically speaking, one may say that the hypocrite is too ambitious not only does he want to appear virtuous before others, he wants to convince himself.
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Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless.
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As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.
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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.
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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.
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