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 ARENDTThe 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 ARENDTWhen 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 ARENDTThe aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
HANNAH ARENDTMen, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin.
HANNAH ARENDTCourage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.
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 ARENDTUnder conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
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 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 ARENDTNo punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
HANNAH ARENDTWar has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.
HANNAH ARENDTFor abundance and endless consumption are the ideals of the poor: they are the mirage in the desert of misery.
HANNAH ARENDTAs citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.
HANNAH ARENDTRevolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.
HANNAH ARENDTMan 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 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 ARENDT