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It is because we know happiness that we want to be happy, and since nothing is more certain than our wanting to be happy, our notion of happiness guides us in determining the respective goods that then became objects of our desires.

Hannah Arendt

When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.
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Old Philosophy Truth
Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality—whatever it may be or might have been.
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Advice Reality
The only antidote to the irreversibility of history is the faculty of forgiveness.
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Forgiveness History
Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
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Act Easy Thinking
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.
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Fall History Place
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
Compared with the mobilization of all opponents to the government as such, the capturing of lower middle-class votes was a temporary phenomenon.
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Government Politics
There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.
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Argument Avoid Control Present
Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.
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Evil Survive
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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Desire Enjoyment Loss
The point is that both Hitler and Stalin held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability.
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Creation Hide Promise
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
The language of the mob was only the language of public opinion cleansed of hypocrisy and restraint.
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Language Public
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
A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow.
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Life Presence Shallow
What we usually call life is death, what we usually call death is life.
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Death Deep Life Philosophy
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
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
Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.
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Force Love Nature Politics Powerful Reason
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.
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Opinion Powerful Race
The antisemites who called themselves patriots introduced that new species of national feeling which consists primarily in a complete whitewash of one’s own people and a sweeping condemnation of all others.
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Feeling Oppression People
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
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.
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Danger Philosophy Thinking
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
For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.
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Nation Politics Support
Men in plural, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.
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Experience Man Talk
Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.
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Forgiveness History

It is because we know happiness that we want to be happy, and since nothing is more certain than our wanting to be happy, our notion of happiness guides us in determining the respective goods that then became objects of our desires.

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It is because we know happiness that we want to be happy, and since nothing is more certain than our wanting to be happy, our notion of happiness guides us in determining the respective goods that then became objects of our desires.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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