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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.

Hannah Arendt

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.
HANNAH ARENDT

Oneself Right World
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
For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.
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Nation Politics Support
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
But this was a moral question, and the answer to it may not have been legally relevant.
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Moral Philosophy
A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow.
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Life Presence Shallow
The curious sterility of utopias comes from the absence within them of any scope for initiative, any room for plurality.
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Absence Deep
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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Himself Philosophy Suffering
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
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
Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.
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Courage Life Politics
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.
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Character Evil Lost People
The third world is not a reality, but an ideology.
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Ideas Reality World
The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them.
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Government Man Nature
Revolutionary action more often than not was a theatrical concession to the desires of violently discontented masses rather than an actual battle for power.
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Action Battle Desire Power Revolution Violence
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 ARENDT

Destruction Establishment Old Violence

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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