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The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

Hannah Arendt

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

Acceptance Nation
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.
HANNAH ARENDT

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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Attention Reality Resistance
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
Compared with the mobilization of all opponents to the government as such, the capturing of lower middle-class votes was a temporary phenomenon.
HANNAH ARENDT

Government Politics
To be sure, we are still aware that thinking calls not only for intelligence and profundity but above all for courage.
HANNAH ARENDT

Courage Intelligence Thinking
The organization of the entire texture of life according to an ideology can be fully carried out only under a totalitarian regime.
HANNAH ARENDT

Ideas Life
War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.
HANNAH ARENDT

Luxury Nation War
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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Evidence Future Violence War
A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow.
HANNAH ARENDT

Life Presence Shallow
Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
HANNAH ARENDT

Action Forgiveness Freedom
Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.
HANNAH ARENDT

Attraction Politics Won
Slavery became the social condition of the laboring classes because it was felt that it was the natural condition of life itself.
HANNAH ARENDT

Feeling Slave
The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.
HANNAH ARENDT

Dream Perspective True
What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use.
HANNAH ARENDT

Hate Man People Power Reality Tolerance
Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation.
HANNAH ARENDT

Evil Lost Quality

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

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The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

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