Quote

Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

Hannah Arendt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Weakness
Choose
Forget
Evil
Lesser
Always
Politically
Chose
Quickly
Argument

More quotes by Hannah Arendt

Image
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
Image
It is in the nature of a group and its power to turn against independence, the property of individual strength.
Hannah Arendt
Image
The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The basic fallacy , taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.
Hannah Arendt
Image
One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Legends have always played a powerful role in the making of history. ... Without ever relating facts reliably, yet always expressing their true significance, they offered a truth beyond realities, a remembrance beyond memories.
Hannah Arendt
Image
The conflict between art and politics... cannot and must not be solved.
Hannah Arendt
Image
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.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.
Hannah Arendt
Image
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.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Mathematics, the non-empirical science par excellence . . . the science of sciences, delivering the key to those laws of nature and the universe which are concealed by appearances.
Hannah Arendt
Image
It is a society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the ferrets of labor, and this society does no longer know of those other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won.
Hannah Arendt
Image
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
Image
Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it.
Hannah Arendt
Image
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
Image
Metaphysical fallacies contain the only clues we have to what thinking means to those who engage in it.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Men always want to be terribly influential, but I see that as somewhat external. Do I imagine myself being influential? No. I want to understand. And if others understand--in the same sense that I have understood--that gives me a sense of satisfaction, like feeling at home.
Hannah Arendt
Image
It interrupts any doing, any ordinary activities, no matter what they happen to be. All thinking demands a stop-and-think.
Hannah Arendt
Image
In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.
Hannah Arendt
Image
Plurality of languages: [...] It is crucial 1. that there are many languages and that they differ not only in vocabulary, but also in grammar, and so in mode of thought and 2. that all languages are learnable.
Hannah Arendt