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The business of thinking ... undoes every morning what it had finished the night before.

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
Business
Night
Every
Thinking
Undoes
Finished
Morning

More quotes by Hannah Arendt

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For excellence, the presence of others is always required.
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With the rise of Christianity, faith replaced thought as the bringer of immortality.
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Metaphysical fallacies contain the only clues we have to what thinking means to those who engage in it.
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Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
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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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The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality.
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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.
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Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.
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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 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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Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up.
Hannah Arendt
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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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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.
Hannah Arendt
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The climax of terror is reached when the police state begins to devour its own children, when yesterday's executioner becomes today's victim.
Hannah Arendt
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power can be thought of as the never-ending, self-feeding motor of all political action that corresponds to the legendary unending accumulation of money that begets money.
Hannah Arendt
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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.
Hannah Arendt
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While strength is the natural quality of an individual seen in isolation, power springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse.
Hannah Arendt
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The Third World is not a reality but an ideology.
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There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.
Hannah Arendt
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Goodness that comes out of hiding and assumes a public role is no longer good, but corrupt in its own terms and will carry its own corruption wherever it goes.
Hannah Arendt