Hannah Arendt Quotes - Page 10

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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.

Hannah Arendt

Odds, Law, Miracle

Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.178, University of Chicago Press

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... whatever men do or know or experience can make sense only to the extent that it can be spoken about. There may be truths beyond speech, and they may be of great relevance to man in the singular, that is, to man in so far as he is not a political being, whatever else he may be. Men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and act in this world, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and to themselves.

Hannah Arendt

Truth, Moving, Men

Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.4, University of Chicago Press

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There is no lasting happiness outside the prescribed cycle of painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration, and whatever throws this cycle out of balance – poverty and misery where exhaustion is followed by wretchedness instead of regeneration, or great riches and an entirely effortless life where boredom takes the place of exhaustion and where the mills of necessity, of consumption and digestion, grind an impotent human body mercilessly and barrenly to death – ruins the elemental happiness that comes from being alive.

Hannah Arendt

Lasting Happiness, Boredom, Balance

Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.108, University of Chicago Press

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Of all human activities, only labor, and neither action nor work, is unending, progressing automatically in accordance with life itself and outside the range of willful decisions or humanly meaningful purposes.

Hannah Arendt

Meaningful, Work, Decision

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If the world is to contain a public space, it cannot be erected for one generation and planned for the living only; it must transcend the life-span of mortal men…. There is perhaps no clearer testimony to the loss of the public realm in the modern age than the almost complete loss of authentic concern with immortality, a loss somewhat overshadowed by the simultaneous loss of the metaphysical concern with eternity.

Hannah Arendt

Loss, Men, Space

Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.55, University of Chicago Press

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the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.

Hannah Arendt

Power, Government, Evil

Hannah Arendt (1963). “On revolution”, Viking Press

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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.

Hannah Arendt

Dubious, Matter, Violence

Hannah Arendt (1970). “On Violence”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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If this practice [of totalitarianism] is compared with […] [the desert] of tyranny, it seems as if a way had been found to set the desert itself in motion, to let loose a sand storm that could cover all parts of the inhabited earth.
The conditions under which we exist today in the field of politics are indeed threatened by these devastating sand storms.

Hannah Arendt

Practice, Storm, Desert

Hannah Arendt (1968). “Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.200, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Scientific and philosophic truth have parted company.

Hannah Arendt

Company, Philosophic

Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.290, University of Chicago Press

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[About Eichmann:] It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us - the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.

Hannah Arendt

Taught Us, Long, Evil

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil ch. 15 (1963)

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The heritage of the American Revolution is forgotten, and the American government, for better and for worse, has entered into theheritage of Europe as though it were its patrimony--unaware, alas, of the fact that Europe's declining power was preceded and accompanied by political bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of the nation-state and its concept of sovereignty.

Hannah Arendt

Government, Europe, Political

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Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.

Hannah Arendt

World, Stakes

Hannah Arendt (2000). “The Portable Hannah Arendt”, Penguin Group USA

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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.

Hannah Arendt

Death, Dying, Quiet

Hannah Arendt (1981). “The Life of the Mind”, p.180, HMH

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For the lesson of such stories [of resistance to Nazi atrocities] is simple and within everybody's grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that "it could happen" in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.

Hannah Arendt

Country, Simple, People

"Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil". Book by Hannah Arendt. Chapter XIV, 1963.

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Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

Hannah Arendt

Political, Events, Revolution

Hannah Arendt (2006). “On Revolution”, p.30, Penguin

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Lacking the truth, [we] will however finds instants of truth, and these instants are in fact all we have available to us to give some order to this chaos of horror.

Hannah Arendt

Order, Giving, Facts

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According to bourgeois standards, those who are completely unlucky and unsuccessful are automatically barred from competition, which is the life of society. Good fortune is identified with honor, and bad luck with shame.

Hannah Arendt

Competition, Luck, Honor

Hannah Arendt (1968). “Imperialism: Part Two Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Men in plural […] can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.

Hannah Arendt

Men, Make Sense, Meaningfulness

Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.4, University of Chicago Press

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We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for their abundance.

Hannah Arendt

Life, Excess, Common

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... the space left to freedom is very small.ends are inherent in human nature and the same for all.

Hannah Arendt

Freedom, Space, Human Nature

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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.

Hannah Arendt

Past, Long, Appearance

Hannah Arendt (2006). “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”, p.238, Penguin

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The individual who has been liberated by reason is always running head-on into a world, a society, whose past in the shape of 'prejudices' has a great deal of power; he is forced to learn that past reality is also a reality.

Hannah Arendt

Running, Past, Reality

Hannah Arendt (1974). “Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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Love, in distinction from friendship, is killed, or rather extinguished, the moment it is displayed in public.

Hannah Arendt

Friendship, Friendship Love, Moments

Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.51, University of Chicago Press

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Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wanderhelplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man's lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities--a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.

Hannah Arendt

Lonely, Integrity, Heart

Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.237, University of Chicago Press

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It is a society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the ferrets of labor, and this society does no longer know of those other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won.

Hannah Arendt

Meaningful, Freedom, Automation

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Born: October 14, 1906
Died: December 4, 1975
Occupation: Philosopher
Cite this Page: Citation

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