Quotes from Hannah Arendt

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.

Das den Nürnberger Prozessen zugrunde liegende Londoner Statut hat, wie bereits erwähnt, die Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit als unmenschliche Handlungen definiert, woraus dann in der deutschen Übersetzung die bekannten Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit geworden sind - als hätten es die Nazis lediglich an Menschlichkeit fehlen lassen, als sie Millionen in die Gaskammern schickten, wahrhaftig das Understatement des Jahrhunderts.

Je?eli stosujemy przemoc jako ?rodek maj?cy prowadzi? do celu, cel ten czasami si? zmienia lub nigdy nie zostaje osi?gni?ty.

we saw that what makes love, defined as desire, unbearable is the constant fear—that must accompany love—of losing its object.

an increase in the workers' productivity, but exclusively the development of technology, and this depended neither on the working class nor on the bourgeoisie, but on the scientists.

For are not all things created by God? How could God have created evil? [God] made all natures, not only those which persevered in virtue and justice, but also those that were to sin; and the latter [He made] not that they should sin, but that they might decorate the universe whether they wished to sin or not to sin.58

he gains as much power by the system of mutual promises as he loses by his consent to a monopoly of power in the ruler

What will be at stake here is the Will as the spring of action, that is, as the power of spontaneously beginning . . . . No doubt every man, by virtue of his birth, is a new beginning, and his power of beginning may well correspond to this fact of the human condition. It is in line with these Augustinian reflections that the will has sometimes, and not only with Augustine, been considered to be the actualization of the principium individuationis.

far beyond the boundaries within which race-thinking and class-thinking have developed into obligatory patterns of thought, free public opinion has adopted them to such an extent that not only intellectuals but great masses of people will no longer accept a presentation of past or present facts that is not in agreement with either of these views.

Wat zou ik anders moeten doen? Ik kan de mensen toch niet zeggen: 'Jullie begrijpen me verkeerd. In feite voel ik in mijn hart iets anders!' Dat is pas belachelijk.

The fact that the most perfect education in Marxism and Leninism was no guide whatsoever for political behavior—that, on the contrary, one could follow the party line only if one repeated each morning what Stalin had announced the night before—naturally resulted in the same state of mind, the same concentrated obedience, undivided by any attempt to understand what one was doing, that Himmler's ingenious watchword for his SS-men expressed: My honor is my loyalty.

The House of Rothschild became," as Capefigue put it,21 "the chief treasurer of the Holy Alliance.

Since violence—as distinct from power, force, or strength—always needs implements (as Engels pointed out long ago),2 the revolution of technology, a revolution in toolmaking, was especially marked in warfare.

Therefore, nothing happens in the world by chance. This having been established, it seems to follow that whatever is done in the world is done partly by divine agency and partly by our will.

Le système de gouvernement représentatif connaît aujourd'hui une crise en partie parce qu'il a perdu, avec le temps, toutes les institutions qui pouvaient permettre une participation effective des citoyens et, d'autre part, parce qu'il est gravement atteint par le mal qui affecte le système des partis: la bureaucratisation et la tendance des deux partis à ne représenter que leurs appareils.

Sólo se puede confiar en las palabras si uno está seguro de que su función es revelar y no ocultar.

What "happens by our will" turns heaven and earth into the world in this second sense.

I can only seek that thing of whose existence I have some kind of knowledge.

In other words, the deliberate denial of factual truth—the ability to lie—and the capacity to change facts—the ability to act—are interconnected; they owe their existence to the same source: imagination.

Antisemitism first flared up in Prussia immediately after the defeat by Napoleon in 1807, when the "Reformers" changed the political structure so that the nobility lost its privileges and the middle classes won their freedom to develop.

Loneliness is not solitude. Solitude requires being alone whereas loneliness shows itself most sharply in company with others.

The beginnings of the modern antisemitic movement date back everywhere to the last third of the nineteenth century.

Augustine asks, how do I remember the "happy life"? He answers: Is it like the way we remember joy? Perhaps so, for even when I am sad, I remember joy, just as when I am miserable, I remember the happy life. But I never saw, or heard, or smelled, or tasted joy with a bodily sense. I experienced it in my mind when I rejoiced and knowledge of it has clung to my memory.

The gap between past and future: the nunc stans...timeless region, an eternal presence in complete quiet, lying beyond human clocks and calendars altogether, the quiet of the Now in the time-pressed, time-tossed existence of man ... this small non-time space is the very heart of time. ...it is the very home, the only home, of Mind, Soul and Art; the only point where past and future are gathered together and the pattern and the meaning of the whole become clear.