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To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin... to set something into motion.

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
Motion
Begin
General
Means
Sense
Take
Mean
Something
Initiative

More quotes by Hannah Arendt

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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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Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
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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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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.
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Every thought is an afterthought.
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The conflict between art and politics... cannot and must not be solved.
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By its very nature the beautiful is isolated from everything else. From beauty no road leads to reality.
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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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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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The strength of even the strongest individual can always be overpowered by the many, who often will combine for no other purpose than to ruin strength precisely because of its peculiar independence.
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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.
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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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It is in the nature of a group and its power to turn against independence, the property of individual strength.
Hannah Arendt
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If a given science accidentally reached its goal, this would by no means stop the workers in the field, who would be driven past their goal by the sheer momentum of the illusion of unlimited progress.
Hannah Arendt
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Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
Hannah Arendt
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the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.
Hannah Arendt
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Where all are guilty, no one is confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.
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The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.
Hannah Arendt
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The way God has been thought of for thousands of years is no longer convincing if anything is dead, it can only be the traditional thought of God.
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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