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We noted before that the passion of compassion was singularly absent from the minds and hearts of the men who made the American Revolution.

Hannah Arendt

Half of politics is “image-making”, the other half is the art of making people believe the image.
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Art Believe People Politics
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.
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Easy Effort World
When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.
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Old Philosophy Truth
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.
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Government Man Nature
Compared with the mobilization of all opponents to the government as such, the capturing of lower middle-class votes was a temporary phenomenon.
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Government Politics
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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Creation Hide Promise
Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance.
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Absence Power Violence
For it is evident that those who regard the whole earth as their future territory will stress the organ of domestic violence and will rule conquered territory with police methods and personnel rather than with the army.
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Evidence Future Violence War
The language of the mob was only the language of public opinion cleansed of hypocrisy and restraint.
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Language Public
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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Age Virtue Wisdom Young
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.
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Greatness Oneself
Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man; politically, it is identified with man’s freedom. ‘That a beginning be made man was created’ said Augustine. This beginning is guaranteed by each new birth; it is indeed every man.
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Beginning Born Freedom Identify Man Philosophy
Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.
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Courage Life Politics
The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.
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Enemy Greatness Laughter
Whatever can be taken away from a lasting enjoyment for its own sake cannot possibly be the proper object of desire.
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Desire Enjoyment Loss
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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Commitment Evil Need Religious

We noted before that the passion of compassion was singularly absent from the minds and hearts of the men who made the American Revolution.

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We noted before that the passion of compassion was singularly absent from the minds and hearts of the men who made the American Revolution.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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