Hannah Arendt Quotes About Violence

Quotes about: Violence

• 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

• Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.

  Hannah Arendt

  Peace, Mean, Peculiar

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.47, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

  Hannah Arendt

  Peace, Power, Opposites

  Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.165, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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

• Violence is an expression of impotence.

  Hannah Arendt

  Expression, Violence, Impotence

• Generally speaking, violence always arises out of impotence. It is the hope of those who have no power.

  Hannah Arendt

  Violence, Arise, Impotence

• Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.

  Hannah Arendt

  Creating, Violence, Incapable

  Hannah Arendt (1970). “On Violence”, p.62, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The more dubious and uncertain an instrument violence has become in international relations, the more it has gained in reputation and appeal in domestic affairs, specifically in the matter of revolution.

  Hannah Arendt

  Dubious, Matter, Violence

  Hannah Arendt (1970). “On Violence”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.

  Hannah Arendt

  Power, Government, Evil

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

• The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One against All.

  Hannah Arendt

  Power, Violence, Form

  Hannah Arendt (1970). “On Violence”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.

  Hannah Arendt

  Gun, Perfect, Violence

  Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.162, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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.

  Hannah Arendt

  Lying, Past, Violence

  Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.161, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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

  Children, Yesterday, Police

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