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The most radical and the only secure form of possession is destruction, for only what we have destroyed is safely and forever ours.

Hannah Arendt

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
HANNAH ARENDT

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
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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Beginning Born Freedom Identify Man Philosophy
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
Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
HANNAH ARENDT

Action Forgiveness Freedom
The third world is not a reality, but an ideology.
HANNAH ARENDT

Ideas Reality World
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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Ability Exercise Person Right Wrong
The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.
HANNAH ARENDT

Commitment Evil Greatness Human Person
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 ARENDT

Anger Justice Oneself
When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.
HANNAH ARENDT

Old Philosophy Truth
The organization of the entire texture of life according to an ideology can be fully carried out only under a totalitarian regime.
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Ideas Life
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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Freedom Liberty Man Necessary Success Win
Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world.
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Existence World
For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.
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Nation Politics Support
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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Desire Goodness Happiness Ourselves
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

Creation Hide Promise

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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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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