black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced upon his throne.

Hannah Arendt

Every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them children.
HANNAH ARENDT

Children Nation
Compared with the mobilization of all opponents to the government as such, the capturing of lower middle-class votes was a temporary phenomenon.
HANNAH ARENDT

Government Politics
It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lessons that this long course in human wickedness had taught us – the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.
HANNAH ARENDT

Evil Himself Learning Word
Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.
HANNAH ARENDT

Act Action Possible
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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Attraction Best Ideas Ourselves Time Worst
A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow.
HANNAH ARENDT

Life Presence Shallow
Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality—whatever it may be or might have been.
HANNAH ARENDT

Advice Reality
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

Force Love Nature Politics Powerful Reason
Revolutionary action more often than not was a theatrical concession to the desires of violently discontented masses rather than an actual battle for power.
HANNAH ARENDT

Action Battle Desire Power Revolution Violence
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
HANNAH ARENDT

Commitment Mistake Reveal
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
HANNAH ARENDT

Development Failure Life Man Quite Thinking
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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Commitment Evil Need Religious
Under the most diverse conditions and disparate circumstances, we watch the development of the same phenomena—homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth.
HANNAH ARENDT

Development Different See
If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man.
HANNAH ARENDT

Oneself Right World
Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.
HANNAH ARENDT

Evil Survive
There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.
HANNAH ARENDT

Argument Avoid Control Present

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced upon his throne.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced upon his throne.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Hannah Arendt Quotes