Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
HANNAH ARENDTUnder conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
HANNAH ARENDTA 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
HANNAH ARENDTThe 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.
HANNAH ARENDTThe third world is not a reality, but an ideology.
HANNAH ARENDTTools and instruments which can ease the effort of labor considerably are themselves not a product of labor but of work; they do not belong in the process of consumption but are part and parcel of the world of use objects.
HANNAH ARENDTWhat 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 ARENDTWe first become aware of freedom or its opposite in our intercourse with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves.
HANNAH ARENDTThe most radical and the only secure form of possession is destruction, for only what we have destroyed is safely and forever ours.
HANNAH ARENDTBeginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man; politically, it is identified with man’s freedom. ‘That a beginning be made man was created’ said Augustine. This beginning is guaranteed by each new birth; it is indeed every man.
HANNAH ARENDTMen, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin.
HANNAH ARENDTHitlerism 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.
HANNAH ARENDTThe aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
HANNAH ARENDTOnly 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 ARENDTThere are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.
HANNAH ARENDTThe greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.
HANNAH ARENDTThere 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.
HANNAH ARENDT