Hannah Arendt Quotes About Politics

Quotes about: Politics

• The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

  Hannah Arendt

  Memorable, Political Revolution, Revolutionary Leaders

  New Yorker 12 Sept. 1970, p. 88

• There always comes a point beyond which lying becomes counterproductive. This point is reached when the audience to which the lies are addressed is forced to disregard altogether the distinguishing line between truth and falsehood in order to be able to survive.

  Hannah Arendt

  Lying, Order, Lines

  Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• In the era of imperialism, businessmen became politicians and were acclaimed as statesmen, while statesmen were taken seriously only if they talked the language of succcessful businessmen.

  Hannah Arendt

  Business, Taken, Politics

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Imperialism: Part Two Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.

  Hannah Arendt

  Peace, Civilization, Politics

  Hannah Arendt (1963). “On revolution”, Viking Press

• Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.

  Hannah Arendt

  Men, Political, Speech

  Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.3, University of Chicago Press

• Our problem today is not how to expropriate the expropriators but, rather, how to arrange matters so that the masses, dispossessed by industrial society in capitalist and socialist systems, can regain property. For this reason alone, the alternative between capitalism and socialism is false-not only because neither exists anywhere in its pure state anyhow, but because we have here twins, each wearing different hats.

  Hannah Arendt

  Wisdom, Different, Alternatives

• 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

  Power, Self, Political

  Origins of Totalitarianism ch. 5 (1951)

• Jefferson, though the secret vote was still unknown at the time had at least a foreboding of how dangerous it might be to allow the people to share a public power without providing them at the same time with more public space than the ballot box and with more opportunity to make their voices heard in public than on election day. What he perceived to be the mortal danger to the republic was that the Constitution had given all power to the citizens, without giving them the opportunity of being citizens and of acting as citizens.

  Hannah Arendt

  Wisdom, Opportunity, Space

  Hannah Arendt (1963). “On revolution”, Viking Press

• Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.

  Hannah Arendt

  Love, Peace, Powerful

  Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.242, University of Chicago Press

• ... the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction betweenour present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority.

  Hannah Arendt

  Religious, Loss, Afterlife

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Between past and future: eight exercises in political thought”, Viking Adult

• 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.

  Hannah Arendt

  Power, Political, Expansion

  Hannah Arendt (2017). “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.198, Penguin UK

• Entirely new concepts are very rare in politics.

  Hannah Arendt

  Politics, Concepts

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Imperialism: Part Two Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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