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The last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.

Hannah Arendt

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.
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Argument Avoid Control Present
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
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
To be sure, we are still aware that thinking calls not only for intelligence and profundity but above all for courage.
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Courage Intelligence Thinking
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.
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Desire Goodness Happiness Ourselves
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
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
War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.
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Luxury Nation War
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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Character Evil Lost People
What we usually call life is death, what we usually call death is life.
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Death Deep Life Philosophy
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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Difference Equality Literature
The only possible metaphor one may conceive of for the life of the mind is the sensation of being alive. Without the breath of life, the human body is a corpse; without thinking, the human mind is dead.
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Alive Deep Life Metaphor Possible Thinking
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
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.
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Danger Philosophy Thinking
The most radical and the only secure form of possession is destruction, for only what we have destroyed is safely and forever ours.
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Destruction Forever Ourselves Safety Secure
The curious sterility of utopias comes from the absence within them of any scope for initiative, any room for plurality.
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Absence Deep

The last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.

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The last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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