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.
HANNAH ARENDTEvil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.
More Hannah Arendt Quotes
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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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The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
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And if he suffers, he must suffer for what he has done, not for what he has caused others to suffer.
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As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.
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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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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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For legends attract the very best in our times, just as ideologies attract the average, and the whispered tales of gruesome secret powers behind the scenes attract the very worst.
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What we usually call life is death, what we usually call death is life.
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No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
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It is quite gratifying to feel guilty if you haven’t done anything wrong: how noble! Whereas it is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent.
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Hitlerism exercised its strong international and inter-European appeal during the thirties because racism, although a state doctrine only in Germany, had been a powerful trend in public opinion everywhere.
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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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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.
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Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality—whatever it may be.
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The antisemites who called themselves patriots introduced that new species of national feeling which consists primarily in a complete whitewash of one’s own people and a sweeping condemnation of all others.
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