Quotes from Hannah Arendt

el hecho de que incluso esta autoridad prepolítica que regía las relaciones entre adultos y niños, profesores y alumnos, ya no sea firme significa que todas las metáforas y modelos antiguamente aceptados de las relaciones autoritarias han perdido su carácter admisible.

The Nazis, it turned out, possessed neither the manpower nor the will power to remain "tough" when they met determined opposition.

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. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.

Those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil." — Hannah Arendt

est, sans conteste, la tonalité absolument dominante

The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world.

Small as these first antisemitic parties were, they at once distinguished themselves from all other parties. They made the original claim that they were not a party among parties but a party "above all parties." In the class-and party-ridden nation-state, only the state and the government had ever claimed to be above all parties and classes, to represent the nation as a whole.

Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.

The modern discovery of history and historical consciousness owed one of its greatest impulses neither to a new enthusiasm for the greatness of man, his doings and sufferings, nor to the belief that the meaning of human existence can be found in the story of mankind, but to the despair of human reason, which seemed adequate only when confronted with man-made objects.

We had the whole population against us," Jews hidden by Christian families could "be counted on the fingers of one hand," perhaps five or six out of a total of thirteen thousand—but on the whole the situation had, surprisingly, been better in Poland than in any other Eastern European country.

Philosophy suffered more from modernity than any other field of human endeavor.

Image-making as global policy—not world conquest, but victory in the battle "to win the people's minds"—is indeed something new in the huge arsenal of human follies recorded in history.

The antisemitic parties' claim to be "above all parties" announced clearly their aspiration to become the representative of the whole nation, to get exclusive power, to take possession of the state machinery, to substitute themselves for the state.

In brief, imitation belongs first among the basic structures that rule human conduct, so that even seeming desertions must be understood as mere perversions. Second, imitation can be actualized explicitly through love: "They loved by believing; they imitated by loving."36

A melhor forma de determinar se uma pessoa foi expulsa do âmbito da lei é perguntar se, para ela, seria melhor cometer um crime. Se um pequeno furto pode melhorar a sua posição legal, pelo menos temporariamente, podemos estar certos de que foi destituída dos direitos humanos. Pois o crime passa a ser, então, a melhor forma de recuperação de certa igualdade humana, mesmo que ela seja reconhecida como exceção à norma.

Qualquer movimento, os movimentos do corpo e da alma, bem como o discurso e o raciocínio, devem cessar diante da verdade. Esta, seja a antiga verdade do Ser ou a verdade cristã do Deus vivo, só pode revelar-se na quietude humana.

Less immediately significant but of greater importance for totalitarian governments was the other experience in Africa's race society, that profit motives are not holy and can be overruled, that societies can function according to principles other than economic, and that such circumstances may favour those who under conditions of rationalised production and the capitalist system would belong to the underprivileged

Not only does the actual meaning of every event always transcend any number of past causes which we may assign to it, this past itself comes into being only with the event itself.

Through remembrance man discovers this twofold "before" of human existence . . . . This is the reason why the return to one's origin (redire ad creatorem) can at the same time be understood as an anticipating reference to one's end.

While the people in all great revolutions fight for true representation, the mob always will shout for for the 'strong man', the 'great leader'.

It is memory and not expectation (for instance, the expectation of death as in Heidegger's approach) that gives unity and wholeness to human existence.

Augustine's pietistic, confessional stream of discourse also broke with the tradition of Western thought by reconfiguring the idea of the soul, not only as rational "essence" but also as "the mysterious and unknown realms of [the] inner world that were no less hidden . . . than the distant realms of the outer world

La razón por la que puede ser prudente desconfiar del juicio político de los científicos no es fundamentalmente su falta de carácter—que n o se negaran a desarrollar armas atómicas—o su ingenuidad—que no entendieran que una vez desarrolladas dichas armas serían los últimos en ser consultados sobre su empleo—, sino concretamente el hecho de que se mueven en un mundo donde el discurso ha perdido su poder.

The question is only whether we wish to use our new scientific and technical knowledge in this direction, and this question cannot be decided by scientific means; it is a political question of the first order and therefore can hardly be left to the decision of professional scientists or professional politicians.