Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Johanna "Hannah" Arendtwas a German-born Jew and American political theorist. Though often described as a philosopher, she rejected that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular" and instead described herself as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact that "men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world." She escaped Europe during the Holocaust, becoming an American citizen. Her works deal with the nature of power, and the subjects...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth14 October 1906
CityHanover, Germany
CountryGermany
It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, because you can remain the friend of the sufferer; who would want to be the friend of and have to live together with a murderer? Not even another murderer.
All political institutions are manifestations and materializations of power; they petrify and decay as soon as the living power of the people ceases to uphold them.
the rule of Nobody ... is what the political form known as bureaucracy truly is.
Conscience is the anticipation of the fellow who awaits you if and when you come home.
The way God has been thought of for thousands of years is no longer convincing; if anything is dead, it can only be the traditional thought of God.
the touchstone of a free act - from the decision to get out of bed in the morning or take a walk in the afternoon to the highest resolutions by which we bind ourselves for the future - is always that we know that we could also have left undone what we actually did.
the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.
What I cannot live with may not bother another man's conscience. The result is that conscience will stand against conscience.
[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.
Generally speaking, violence always arises out of impotence. It is the hope of those who have no power ...
Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.
thinking beings have an urge to speak, speaking beings have an urge to think.
Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing?
As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.