65 Famous Quotes by Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German philosopher and political theorist who is best known for her work on totalitarianism and the nature of power. Her book "The Origins of Totalitarianism" is a seminal work in the field of political theory, and it has had a profound influence on the development of modern political thought. Arendt's approach emphasized the importance of individual freedom and the need to resist oppressive regimes. Her legacy as a thinker and advocate for human rights continues to inspire activists and scholars around the world. (Hannah Arendt Biography).
Hannah Arendt Famous Quotes
Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes (Meaning)
By its very nature the beautiful is isolated from everything else. From beauty no road leads to reality. (Meaning)
The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. (Meaning)
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous. (Meaning)
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. (Meaning)
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. (Meaning)
In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism. (Meaning)
Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible. (Meaning)
Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up. (Meaning)
Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom. (Meaning)
Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think. (Meaning)
Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance. (Meaning)
Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise. (Meaning)
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been. (Meaning)
Nothing we use or hear or touch can be expressed in words that equal what is given by the senses. (Meaning)
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. (Meaning)
War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford. (Meaning)
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. (Meaning)
The Third World is not a reality but an ideology. (Meaning)
Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of life. (Meaning)
Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject. (Meaning)
The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition. (Meaning)
Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being. (Meaning)
Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history. (Meaning)
This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes
By its very nature the beautiful is isolated from everything else. From beauty no road leads to reality.
The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.
The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.
In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.
The ultimate end of human acts is eudaimonia, happiness in the sense of living well, which all men desire; all acts are but different means chosen to arrive at it.
Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.
Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up.
Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.
Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise.
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.
Nothing we use or hear or touch can be expressed in words that equal what is given by the senses.
Where 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.
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.
Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless.
No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.
The Third World is not a reality but an ideology.
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.
War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious.
Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.
Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject.
It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.
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.
The more dubious and uncertain an instrument violence has become in international relations, the more it has gained in reputation and appeal in domestic affairs, specifically in the matter of revolution.
We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for their abundance.
Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.
The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition.
Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse.
The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error.
Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.
It is my contention that civil disobediences are nothing but the latest form of voluntary association, and that they are thus quite in tune with the oldest traditions of the country.
The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.
Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of life.
― Hannah Arendt Quotes
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Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
