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If men were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking, they would lose the capacity for asking all the unanswerable questions upon which every civilization is founded.
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
Upon
Questions
Ever
Asking
Every
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Would
Civilization
Men
Meaning
Thinking
Lose
Unanswerable
Loses
Founded
Call
Appetite
More quotes by Hannah Arendt
The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.
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Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.
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every thought is strictly speaking an after-thought.
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Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.
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The saving grace of all really great gifts is that the persons who bear their burden remain superior to what they have done, at least as long as the source of creativity is alive.
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Scientific and philosophic truth have parted company.
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A theology which is not based on revelation as a given reality but treats God as an idea would be as mad as a zoology which is no longer sure of the physical, tangible existence of animals.
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Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future. Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate.
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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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Thinking withdraws radically and for its own sake from this world and its evidential nature, whereas science profits from a possible withdrawal for the sake of specific results.
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thinking beings have an urge to speak, speaking beings have an urge to think.
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Imperialism was born when the ruling class in capitalist production came up against national limits to its economic expansion.
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Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it.
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Kant ... was also quite aware that the urgent need of reason is both different from and more than mere quest and desire for knowledge. Hence, the distinguishing of the two faculties, reason and intellect, coincides with a distinction between two altogether different mental activities, thinking and knowing.
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Conscience is the anticipation of the fellow who awaits you if and when you come home.
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Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.
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Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse.
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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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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.
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There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.
Hannah Arendt
