black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.

Hannah Arendt

Society is the form in which the fact of mutual dependence for the sake of life and nothing else assumes public significance and where the activities connected with sheer survival are permitted to appear in public.
HANNAH ARENDT

Appearance Connection Life Survive
Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
HANNAH ARENDT

Crime Politics True
War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.
HANNAH ARENDT

Luxury Nation War
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
The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story.
HANNAH ARENDT

Alive Existence History Human Man Perfection
The curious sterility of utopias comes from the absence within them of any scope for initiative, any room for plurality.
HANNAH ARENDT

Absence Deep
There is no class that cannot be wiped out if a sufficient number of its members are murdered.
HANNAH ARENDT

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

Enemy Greatness Laughter
Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality—whatever it may be or might have been.
HANNAH ARENDT

Advice Reality
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
The third world is not a reality, but an ideology.
HANNAH ARENDT

Ideas Reality World
To be sure, totalitarian dictators do not consciously embark upon the road to insanity.
HANNAH ARENDT

Road Sanity
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
The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.
HANNAH ARENDT

Commitment Evil Greatness Human Person
Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.
HANNAH ARENDT

Freedom Liberty Man Necessary Success Win
The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.
HANNAH ARENDT

Dream Perspective True

When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Hannah Arendt Quotes