black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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.

Hannah Arendt

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

Enemy Greatness Laughter
The last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.
HANNAH ARENDT

Effort Escape History Ideas Responsibility
Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up. Armed uprising by itself has never yet led to revolution.
HANNAH ARENDT

Lying Power Revolution Weapon
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
For abundance and endless consumption are the ideals of the poor: they are the mirage in the desert of misery.
HANNAH ARENDT

End Ideas Misery Poor
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
HANNAH ARENDT

Commitment Mistake Reveal
Slavery became the social condition of the laboring classes because it was felt that it was the natural condition of life itself.
HANNAH ARENDT

Feeling Slave
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
HANNAH ARENDT

Destruction Education
The organization of the entire texture of life according to an ideology can be fully carried out only under a totalitarian regime.
HANNAH ARENDT

Ideas Life
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
HANNAH ARENDT

Evil Goodness Mindset People Sad Truth
A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow.
HANNAH ARENDT

Life Presence Shallow
Evil comes from a failure to think.
HANNAH ARENDT

Evil Failure Thinking
And if he suffers, he must suffer for what he has done, not for what he has caused others to suffer.
HANNAH ARENDT

Himself Philosophy Suffering
Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.
HANNAH ARENDT

Evil Survive
As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.
HANNAH ARENDT

Live Suffering World Wrong

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Hannah Arendt Quotes