Hannah Arendt Quotes - Page 10

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Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

Hannah Arendt

Political, Events, Revolution

Hannah Arendt (2006). “On Revolution”, p.30, Penguin

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There are no parallels to the life of the concentration camps. All seeming parallels create confusion and distract attention from what is essential. Forced labor in prisons and penal colonies, banishment, slavery, all seem for a moment to offer helpful comparisons, but on closer examination lead nowhere.

Hannah Arendt

Confusion, Holocaust, Essentials

Hannah Arendt (1951). “The Burden of Our Time”

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Lacking the truth, [we] will however finds instants of truth, and these instants are in fact all we have available to us to give some order to this chaos of horror.

Hannah Arendt

Order, Giving, Facts

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According to bourgeois standards, those who are completely unlucky and unsuccessful are automatically barred from competition, which is the life of society. Good fortune is identified with honor, and bad luck with shame.

Hannah Arendt

Competition, Luck, Honor

Hannah Arendt (1968). “Imperialism: Part Two Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for their abundance.

Hannah Arendt

Life, Excess, Common

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For the lesson of such stories [of resistance to Nazi atrocities] is simple and within everybody's grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that "it could happen" in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.

Hannah Arendt

Country, Simple, People

"Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil". Book by Hannah Arendt. Chapter XIV, 1963.

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What will happen once the authentic mass man takes over, we do not know yet, although it may be a fair guess that he will have more in common with the meticulous, calculated correctness of Himmler than with the hysterical fanaticism of Hitler, will more resemble the stubborn dullness of Molotov than the sensual vindictive cruelty of Stalin.

Hannah Arendt

Men, Sensual, Stubborn

Hannah Arendt (1968). “Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.49, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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... the space left to freedom is very small.ends are inherent in human nature and the same for all.

Hannah Arendt

Freedom, Space, Human Nature

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The individual who has been liberated by reason is always running head-on into a world, a society, whose past in the shape of 'prejudices' has a great deal of power; he is forced to learn that past reality is also a reality.

Hannah Arendt

Running, Past, Reality

Hannah Arendt (1974). “Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.

Hannah Arendt

Past, Long, Appearance

Hannah Arendt (2006). “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”, p.238, Penguin

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Love, in distinction from friendship, is killed, or rather extinguished, the moment it is displayed in public.

Hannah Arendt

Friendship, Friendship Love, Moments

Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.51, University of Chicago Press

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Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wanderhelplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man's lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities--a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.

Hannah Arendt

Lonely, Integrity, Heart

Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.237, University of Chicago Press

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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

Meaningful, Freedom, Automation

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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

Vocabulary, Language, Grammar

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The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them. And one can debate long and profitably on the rule of Nobody, which is what the political form known as bureau-cracy truly is….we have become very much accustomed by modern psychology and sociology, not to speak of modern bureaucracy, to explaining away the responsibility of the doer for his deed in terms of this or that kind of determinism.

Hannah Arendt

Responsibility, Men, Essence

"The Origins of Totalitarianism". Book by Hannah Arendt, progressive.org. 1951.

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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

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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

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

Hannah Arendt

Morning, Night, Thinking

Hannah Arendt (2009). “Responsibility and Judgment”, p.166, Schocken

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To speak of the impotence of power is no longer a witty paradox.

Hannah Arendt

Witty, Power, Speak

Hannah Arendt (1970). “On violence”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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It interrupts any doing, any ordinary activities, no matter what they happen to be. All thinking demands a stop-and-think.

Hannah Arendt

Thinking, Ordinary, Demand

Hannah Arendt (1981). “The Life of the Mind”, p.94, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The conflict between art and politics... cannot and must not be solved.

Hannah Arendt

Art, Conflict

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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.

Hannah Arendt

Power, Political, Expansion

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

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Our Last Will and Testament, providing for the only future of which we can be reasonably certain, namely our own death, shows thatthe Will's need to will is no less strong than Reason's need to think; in both instances the mind transcends its own natural limitations, either by asking unanswerable questions or by projecting itself into a future which, for the willing subject, will never be.

Hannah Arendt

Death, Strong, Thinking

Hannah Arendt (1981). “The Life of the Mind”, p.270, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, "Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: "Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it - the quality of temptation.

Hannah Arendt

Country, Men, Law

"Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" by Hannah Arendt, (Ch. VIII), 1963.

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We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands...Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship...But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse...The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friend’s presence, is concerned with the common world.

Hannah Arendt

Heart, Essence, Political

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Born: October 14, 1906
Died: December 4, 1975
Occupation: Philosopher
Cite this Page: Citation

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