What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use.
HANNAH ARENDTGood works, because they must be forgotten instantly, can never become part of the world; they come and go,leaving no trace. They truly are not of this world.
More Hannah Arendt Quotes
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Evil, as she saw it, need not be committed only by demonic monsters but—with disastrous effect—by morons and imbeciles as well, especially if, as we see in our own day, their deeds are sanctioned by religious authority.
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No human life, not even the life of the hermit in nature’s wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.
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And the distinction between violent and non-violent action is that the former is exclusively bent upon the destruction of the old, and the latter is chiefly concerned with the establishment of something new.
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For legends attract the very best in our times, just as ideologies attract the average, and the whispered tales of gruesome secret powers behind the scenes attract the very worst.
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Half of politics is “image-making”, the other half is the art of making people believe the image.
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Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
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The language of the mob was only the language of public opinion cleansed of hypocrisy and restraint.
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But this was a moral question, and the answer to it may not have been legally relevant.
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Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.
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For abundance and endless consumption are the ideals of the poor: they are the mirage in the desert of misery.
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Only the unlimited accumulation of power could bring about the unlimited accumulation of capital.
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The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
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Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.
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The crime of the Nuremberg Laws was a national crime; it violated national, constitutional rights and liberties, but it was of no concern to the comity of nations.
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The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.
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