Whatever can be taken away from a lasting enjoyment for its own sake cannot possibly be the proper object of desire.
HANNAH ARENDTIt 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.
More Hannah Arendt Quotes
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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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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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When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.
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We first become aware of freedom or its opposite in our intercourse with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Justice insists on the importance of Adolf Eichmann… On trial are his deeds, not the sufferings of the Jews, not the German people or mankind, not even anti-Semitism and racism.
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Every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them children.
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The language of the mob was only the language of public opinion cleansed of hypocrisy and restraint.
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Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.
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Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.
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The crime of the Nuremberg Laws was a national crime; it violated national, constitutional rights and liberties, but it was of no concern to the comity of nations.
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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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