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Whatever can be taken away from a lasting enjoyment for its own sake cannot possibly be the proper object of desire.

Hannah Arendt

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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Greatness Oneself
The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.
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Enemy Greatness Laughter
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
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Change Revolution
What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use.
HANNAH ARENDT

Hate Man People Power Reality Tolerance
Evil comes from a failure to think.
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Evil Failure Thinking
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
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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Attraction Best Ideas Ourselves Time Worst
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.
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Danger Philosophy Thinking
Men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin.
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Beginning Born Death Man
We noted before that the passion of compassion was singularly absent from the minds and hearts of the men who made the American Revolution.
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Heart Man Mindset Passion
Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation.
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Evil Lost Quality
What are we “doing” when we do nothing but think? Where are we when we, normally always surrounded by our fellow men, are together with no one but ourselves?
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Action Company Man Thinking Togetherness
But this was a moral question, and the answer to it may not have been legally relevant.
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Moral Philosophy
Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality—whatever it may be.
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Attention Reality Resistance
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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Attraction Politics Won
Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.
HANNAH ARENDT

Forgiveness History

Whatever can be taken away from a lasting enjoyment for its own sake cannot possibly be the proper object of desire.

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Whatever can be taken away from a lasting enjoyment for its own sake cannot possibly be the proper object of desire.

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