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Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.

Hannah Arendt

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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Destruction Establishment Old Violence
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.
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Evidence Future Violence War
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.
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Danger Philosophy Thinking
The third world is not a reality, but an ideology.
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Ideas Reality World
Social and economic hatred, on the other hand, reinforced the political argument with that driving violence which up to then it had lacked completely.
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Hands Hate Politics Violence
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.
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Greatness Oneself
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.
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Lie Quality Reality Stop Thinking World
Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.
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Evil Survive
Every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them children.
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Children Nation
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
Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.
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Courage Life Politics
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
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Development Failure Life Man Quite Thinking
If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to ‘demand’ its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.
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Ability Exercise Person Right Wrong
Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world.
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Existence World
It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lessons that this long course in human wickedness had taught us – the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.
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Evil Himself Learning Word
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
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
The only antidote to the irreversibility of history is the faculty of forgiveness.
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Forgiveness History
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
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Destruction Education
Evil comes from a failure to think.
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Evil Failure Thinking
A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow.
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Life Presence Shallow
To be sure, totalitarian dictators do not consciously embark upon the road to insanity.
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Road Sanity
The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.
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Dream Perspective True
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
Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.
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Beginning Politics Problem Revolution
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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Alive Deep Life Metaphor Possible Thinking
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.
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Direction Human Life Nature Possible Presence Wild

Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.

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Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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