Top Hannah Arendt Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Hannah Arendt Biography

Johanna "Hannah" Arendt (/ˈɛərənt, ˈɑːrənt/; German: [ˈaːʀənt]; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German-born American political theorist. Her eighteen books and numerous articles, on topics ranging from totalitarianism to epistemology, had a lasting influence on political theory. Arendt is widely considered one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century.

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Hannah Arendt Quotes

Nothing we use or hear or touch can be expressed in words that equal what is given by the senses.

Equal, Hear, Medicine, Perception, Philosophy, Words

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.

Anticipation, Expect, Inspirational, Prepare, Worry, Worst

power can be thought of as the never-ending, self-feeding motor of all political action that corresponds to the legendary unending accumulation of money that begets money.

Power, Self, Political, Money, Unending

We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands. . . Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship. . . But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse. . . The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friend’s presence, is concerned with the common world.

Essence, Hard, Heart, Permeated, Political, Wont

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

Political, Events, Revolution, Beginning, Confront, Revolutions

Even though we have lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to subsume the particular, a being whose essence is a beginning may have enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality.

Beginning, Essence, Judging, May, Subsume

Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.

Creating, Incapable, Utterly, Violence

Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.

Adherence, Expression, Phrases, Reality, Recognized

It is obvious: if you do not accept something that assumes the form of ‘destiny,’ you not only change its ‘natural laws’ but also the laws of the enemy playing the role of fate.

Fate, Destiny, Law, Obvious, Change, Enemy

The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the easy life of the gods would be a lifeless life.

Effort, Felt, Life, Mortals, Pain, Together

Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.

Discovered, Machinery, Mean, Peace, Peculiar, State

By assigning his political rights to the state the individual also delegates his social responsibilities to it: he asks the state to relieve him of the burden of caring for the poor precisely as he asks for protection against criminals. The difference between pauper and criminal disappears - both stand outside society.

Responsibility, Caring, Differences, Criminal, Against

If it is true. . . that no one has a life worth thinking about whose life story cannot be told, does it not then follow that life could be, even ought to be, lived as a story, that what one has to do in life is to make the story come true?

Life, Thinking, Doe, Come, Worth

War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.

Become, Luxury, Nations, Peace, War, Women

Factual truth is always related to other people [. . . ]. It is political by nature.

Nature, People, Political, Truth, Truth Is

every thought is strictly speaking an after-thought.

Speaking, Strictly, Thinking, Thought

Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.

Left, Political, Politician, Serious

One must think with the body and the soul or not think at all.

Body, Soul, Think, Thinking

If. . . the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant in this respect almost alone among the philosophers was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.

Stupid, Philosophy, Exercise, Person, Common, Ability

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.

Competition, Luck, Honor, Bourgeois, According, Barred

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