Justice demands seclusion, it permits sorrow rather than anger, and it prescribes the most careful abstention from all the nice pleasures of putting oneself in the limelight.
HANNAH ARENDTJustice demands seclusion, it permits sorrow rather than anger, and it prescribes the most careful abstention from all the nice pleasures of putting oneself in the limelight.
HANNAH ARENDTComprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality—whatever it may be.
HANNAH ARENDTThe holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story.
HANNAH ARENDTSociety is the form in which the fact of mutual dependence for the sake of life and nothing else assumes public significance and where the activities connected with sheer survival are permitted to appear in public.
HANNAH ARENDTA life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow.
HANNAH ARENDTUnder conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
HANNAH ARENDTCourage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.
HANNAH ARENDTLoving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time.
HANNAH ARENDTEvil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.
HANNAH ARENDTAnd if he suffers, he must suffer for what he has done, not for what he has caused others to suffer.
HANNAH ARENDTEvil, 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 ARENDTThe sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
HANNAH ARENDTEvil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation.
HANNAH ARENDTWhen an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.
HANNAH ARENDTThe most radical and the only secure form of possession is destruction, for only what we have destroyed is safely and forever ours.
HANNAH ARENDTA 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
HANNAH ARENDT