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The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

Hannah Arendt

Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.
HANNAH ARENDT

Courage Life Politics
For it is evident that those who regard the whole earth as their future territory will stress the organ of domestic violence and will rule conquered territory with police methods and personnel rather than with the army.
HANNAH ARENDT

Evidence Future Violence War
In the Third Reich evil lost its distinctive characteristic by which most people had until then recognized it. The Nazis redefined it as a civil norm.
HANNAH ARENDT

Character Evil Lost People
A life without thinking is quite possible; it then fails to develop its own essence – it is not merely meaningless; it is not fully alive. Unthinking men are like sleepwalkers
HANNAH ARENDT

Development Failure Life Man Quite Thinking
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

Destruction Forever Ourselves Safety Secure
Revolutionary action more often than not was a theatrical concession to the desires of violently discontented masses rather than an actual battle for power.
HANNAH ARENDT

Action Battle Desire Power Revolution Violence
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
HANNAH ARENDT

Destruction Education
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
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
For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.
HANNAH ARENDT

Nation Politics Support
We noted before that the passion of compassion was singularly absent from the minds and hearts of the men who made the American Revolution.
HANNAH ARENDT

Heart Man Mindset Passion
What we usually call life is death, what we usually call death is life.
HANNAH ARENDT

Death Deep Life Philosophy
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
Evil comes from a failure to think.
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Evil Failure Thinking
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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Opinion Powerful Race
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 ARENDT

Commitment Evil Need Religious

The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

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The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

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Popular Authors

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