The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.
HANNAH ARENDTJustice demands seclusion, it permits sorrow rather than anger, and it prescribes the most careful abstention from all the nice pleasures of putting oneself in the limelight.
More Hannah Arendt Quotes
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Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
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The point is that both Hitler and Stalin held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability.
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The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.
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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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Revolutionary action more often than not was a theatrical concession to the desires of violently discontented masses rather than an actual battle for power.
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A life without thinking is quite possible; it then fails to develop its own essence – it is not merely meaningless; it is not fully alive. Unthinking men are like sleepwalkers
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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.
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Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world.
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Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.
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What we usually call life is death, what we usually call death is life.
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The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
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Wisdom is a virtue of old age, and it seems to come only to those who, when young, were neither wise nor prudent.
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Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
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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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To be sure, totalitarian dictators do not consciously embark upon the road to insanity.
HANNAH ARENDT