The only antidote to the irreversibility of history is the faculty of forgiveness.
HANNAH ARENDTIf 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.
More Hannah Arendt Quotes
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Hitlerism exercised its strong international and inter-European appeal during the thirties because racism, although a state doctrine only in Germany, had been a powerful trend in public opinion everywhere.
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In the Third Reich evil lost its distinctive characteristic by which most people had until then recognized it. The Nazis redefined it as a civil norm.
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Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality—whatever it may be or might have been.
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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.
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Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
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There is no class that cannot be wiped out if a sufficient number of its members are murdered.
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It is only to stress the fact that the difference between a clandestine literature and no literature equals the difference between one and zero.
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Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation.
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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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Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.
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No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
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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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For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.
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Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
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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.
HANNAH ARENDT






