Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless.
--Hannah Arendt
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
Dedicate yourself to the good you deserve and desire for yourself. Give yourself peace of mind. You deserve to be happy. You deserve delight.
--Hannah Arendt
Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence.
--Hannah Arendt
Every generation, Western civilization is invaded by barbarians; we call them 'children.'
--Hannah Arendt
Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
--Hannah Arendt
Generally speaking, violence always arises out of impotence. It is the hope of those who have no power.
--Hannah Arendt
Have we now come to the point where it is the children who are being asked to change or improve the world?
--Hannah Arendt
In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would... think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.
--Hannah Arendt
In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.
--Hannah Arendt
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
--Hannah Arendt
One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.
--Hannah Arendt
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
Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.
--Hannah Arendt
Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.
--Hannah Arendt
Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.
--Hannah Arendt
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
--Hannah Arendt
The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.
--Hannah Arendt
The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself.
--Hannah Arendt
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
--Hannah Arendt
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
--Hannah Arendt
The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world.
--Hannah Arendt
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
--Hannah Arendt
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.
--Hannah Arendt
To speak of the impotence of power is no longer a witty paradox.
--Hannah Arendt
Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
--Hannah Arendt
War has... become a luxury which only the small nations can afford.
--Hannah Arendt
Found 27 occurence(s) in 52,450 quotation(s).