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The only possible metaphor one may conceive of for the life of the mind is the sensation of being alive. Without the breath of life, the human body is a corpse; without thinking, the human mind is dead.

Hannah Arendt

The outstanding negative quality of the totalitarian elite is that it never stops to think about the world as it really is and never compares the lies with reality.
HANNAH ARENDT

Lie Quality Reality Stop Thinking World
Whatever can be taken away from a lasting enjoyment for its own sake cannot possibly be the proper object of desire.
HANNAH ARENDT

Desire Enjoyment Loss
Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
HANNAH ARENDT

Action Forgiveness Freedom
To be sure, totalitarian dictators do not consciously embark upon the road to insanity.
HANNAH ARENDT

Road Sanity
Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.
HANNAH ARENDT

Forgiveness History
We first become aware of freedom or its opposite in our intercourse with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves.
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Freedom Ourselves
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
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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Feeling Quite Wrong
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
Colonization took place in America and Australia, the two continents that, without a culture and a history of their own, had fallen into the hands of Europeans.
HANNAH ARENDT

Fall History Place
Loving 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.
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Easy Hands Life Love Time Yourself
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
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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Destruction Forever Ourselves Safety Secure
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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Feeling Slave
Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation.
HANNAH ARENDT

Evil Lost Quality
Men in plural, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.
HANNAH ARENDT

Experience Man Talk

The only possible metaphor one may conceive of for the life of the mind is the sensation of being alive. Without the breath of life, the human body is a corpse; without thinking, the human mind is dead.

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The only possible metaphor one may conceive of for the life of the mind is the sensation of being alive. Without the breath of life, the human body is a corpse; without thinking, the human mind is dead.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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