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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

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
HANNAH ARENDT

Action Forgiveness Freedom
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
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
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Crime Enough Power Punishment
Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation.
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Evil Lost Quality
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
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Destruction Education
One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.
HANNAH ARENDT

Greatness Oneself
Tools and instruments which can ease the effort of labor considerably are themselves not a product of labor but of work; they do not belong in the process of consumption but are part and parcel of the world of use objects.
HANNAH ARENDT

Easy Effort World
Evil comes from a failure to think.
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Evil Failure Thinking
Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world.
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Existence World
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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Direction Human Life Nature Possible Presence Wild
Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality—whatever it may be.
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Attention Reality Resistance
It is because we know happiness that we want to be happy, and since nothing is more certain than our wanting to be happy, our notion of happiness guides us in determining the respective goods that then became objects of our desires.
HANNAH ARENDT

Desire Goodness Happiness Ourselves
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.
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Danger Philosophy Thinking
When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.
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Best Crime Excuse Possible
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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Destruction Establishment Old Violence
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

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

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

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