The history of humanity is not a hotel where someone can rent a room whenever it suits him; nor is it a vehicle which we board or get out of at random. Our past will be for us a burden beneath which we can only collapse for as long as we refuse to understand the present and fight for a better future. Only then — but from that moment on — will the burden become a blessing, that is, a weapon in the battle for freedom.

Hannah Arendt

Categorized in : Past Blessing Fighting

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

true-and-false people fiction

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

Hannah Arendt

body soul thinking

Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies' - 'one against all' - and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.

Hannah Arendt

differences unique men

When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.

Hannah Arendt

winning war peace

Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

Hannah Arendt

argument weakness evil

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

Hannah Arendt

emo inspirational peace

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world - and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end - is being destroyed.

Hannah Arendt

real truth lying

This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which had never been seen before. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down.

Hannah Arendt

beautiful men thinking

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

Hannah Arendt

anticipation worry inspirational

Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it.

Hannah Arendt

thrive apathy evil

the public sphere is as consistently based on the law of equality as the private sphere is based on the law of universal difference and differentiation. Equality, in contrast to all that is involved in mere existence, is not given us, but is the result of human organization insofar as it is guided by the principle of justice. We are not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights.

Hannah Arendt

equality rights law

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

Hannah Arendt

conviction form capacity

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.

Hannah Arendt

atheism memorable thinking

Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time

Hannah Arendt

loving-life love hands

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

advantage twenties facts

There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.

Hannah Arendt

interdependence strange evil

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.

Hannah Arendt

viewpoints atrocities together

The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

Hannah Arendt

laughter enemy way

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

Hannah Arendt

adherence expression reality

The climax of terror is reached when the police state begins to devour its own children, when yesterday's executioner becomes today's victim.

Hannah Arendt

police yesterday children