Hannah Arendt Quotes

Quotes about:

• The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.

  Hannah Arendt

  People, Fiction, True And False

  1326 Copy quote

• The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world - and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end - is being destroyed.

  Hannah Arendt

  Truth, Real, Lying

  "Hannah Arendt Explains How Propaganda Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Morality: Insights from The Origins of Totalitarianism", www.openculture.com. January 24, 2017.

  135 Copy quote

• Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it.

  Hannah Arendt

  Evil, Apathy, Thrive

  64 Copy quote

• The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

  Hannah Arendt

  Conviction, Form, Capacity

  Hannah Arendt (1966). “The origins of totalitarianism”

  92 Copy quote

• Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies' - 'one against all' - and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.

  Hannah Arendt

  Unique, Men, Differences

  199 Copy quote

• The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

  Hannah Arendt

  Inspirational, Peace, Emo

  "The Life of the Mind". Book by Hannah Arendt. Chapter: "Thinking", 1978.

  194 Copy quote

• The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

  Hannah Arendt

  Laughter, Enemy, Way

  Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.154, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  133 Copy quote

• When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.

  Hannah Arendt

  Peace, War, Winning

  177 Copy 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

  Evil, Weakness, Argument

  Hannah Arendt (2009). “Responsibility and Judgment”, p.36, Schocken

  168 Copy quote

• We are free to change the world and start something new in it.

  Hannah Arendt

  World, Changing The World, Something New

  Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  43 Copy quote

• There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.

  Hannah Arendt

  Evil, Strange, Interdependence

  122 Copy quote

• This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.

  Hannah Arendt

  Inspirational, Worry, Anticipation

  159 Copy quote

• Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.

  Hannah Arendt

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

  Hannah Arendt (1970). “Men in Dark Times”, p.115, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  69 Copy quote

• 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

  Twenties, Facts, Advantage

  122 Copy quote

• Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.

  Hannah Arendt

  Lying, Political, Tools

  18 Copy quote

• To think and to be fully alive are the same.

  Hannah Arendt

  Life, Thinking, Inspire

  Hannah Arendt (1981). “The Life of the Mind”, p.194, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  50 Copy quote

• the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.

  Hannah Arendt

  Government, Tyrants, Political

  29 Copy quote

• This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which had never been seen before. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down.

  Hannah Arendt

  Beautiful, Men, Thinking

  127 Copy quote

• The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error.

  Hannah Arendt

  Peace, War, Errors

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.70, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  42 Copy quote

• Violence is an expression of impotence.

  Hannah Arendt

  Expression, Violence, Impotence

  16 Copy quote

• The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.

  Hannah Arendt

  Together, Atrocities, Viewpoints

  Hannah Arendt (2006). “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”, p.241, Penguin

  115 Copy quote

• Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

  Hannah Arendt

  Forgiveness, Life Changing, Being Hurt

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  99 Copy quote

• One must think with the body and the soul or not think at all.

  Hannah Arendt

  Thinking, Soul, Body

  18 Copy quote

• The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world.

  Hannah Arendt

  War, Practice, World

  Hannah Arendt (1970). “On Violence”, p.86, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  61 Copy quote

• the public sphere is as consistently based on the law of equality as the private sphere is based on the law of universal difference and differentiation. Equality, in contrast to all that is involved in mere existence, is not given us, but is the result of human organization insofar as it is guided by the principle of justice. We are not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights.

  Hannah Arendt

  Equality, Rights, Law

  Hannah Arendt (1973). “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.345, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  97 Copy quote

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