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 ARENDTHalf of politics is “image-making”, the other half is the art of making people believe the image.
More Hannah Arendt Quotes
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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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Evil comes from a failure to think.
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Slavery became the social condition of the laboring classes because it was felt that it was the natural condition of life itself.
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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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If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man.
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Men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin.
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There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.
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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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To be sure, totalitarian dictators do not consciously embark upon the road to insanity.
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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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Every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them children.
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And the distinction between violent and non-violent action is that the former is exclusively bent upon the destruction of the old, and the latter is chiefly concerned with the establishment of something new.
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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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The third world is not a reality, but an ideology.
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We first become aware of freedom or its opposite in our intercourse with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves.
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