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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

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
If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to ‘demand’ its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.
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Ability Exercise Person Right Wrong
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
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Commitment Mistake Reveal
What are we “doing” when we do nothing but think? Where are we when we, normally always surrounded by our fellow men, are together with no one but ourselves?
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Action Company Man Thinking Togetherness
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
Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
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Act Easy 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.
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Commitment Evil Need Religious
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
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Crime Enough Power Punishment
For abundance and endless consumption are the ideals of the poor: they are the mirage in the desert of misery.
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End Ideas Misery Poor
Justice insists on the importance of Adolf Eichmann… On trial are his deeds, not the sufferings of the Jews, not the German people or mankind, not even anti-Semitism and racism.
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Deed Importance Justice Suffering
The only antidote to the irreversibility of history is the faculty of forgiveness.
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Forgiveness History
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
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Development Failure Life Man Quite Thinking
Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.
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Attraction Politics Won
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
War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.
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Luxury Nation War
Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.
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Beginning Politics Problem Revolution

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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