Hannah Arendt was a German-Jewish author and political philosopher best known for her intriguing accounts and opinions on numerous political regimes and events.Being a survivor of the Nazi regime, Hannah Arendt had intimately observed the illnesses of a totalitarian society, which influenced her political ideas and beliefs. While her first book, ‘The Origins Of Totalitarianism,’ thoroughly examined Nazi and Stalinist rule, her second book, ‘The Human Condition,’ was a philosophical examination of work, labor, and activity.In addition to these volumes, Hannah Arendt wrote numerous essays on issues such as freedom, revolution, and the modern era. Her last important work, ‘The Life Of Mind,’ was concerned with human thinking, judging, and willingness.Hannah Arendt Quotes From ‘The Origins Of Totalitarianism’Learn the sad truth about a totalitarian regime by reading these Hannah Arendt quotes from her best-seller book ‘The Origins Of Totalitarianism’.“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.”“The antisemites who called themselves patriots introduced that new species of national feeling which consists primarily in a complete whitewash of one’s own people and a sweeping condemnation of all others.”“the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.”“There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.”“The most radical and the only secure form of possession is destruction, for only what we have destroyed is safely and forever ours.”“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true."“Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.”“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”“The outstanding negative quality of the totalitarian elite is that it never stops to think about the world as it really is and never compares the lies with reality.”“Totalitarianism strives not toward despotic rule over men, but toward a system in which men are superfluous."“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”“Revolutionary action more often than not was a theatrical concession to the desires of violently discontented masses rather than an actual battle for power.”“Only the unlimited accumulation of power could bring about the unlimited accumulation of capital.”Thought-Provoking Hannah Arendt Quotes(Find out more about Hannah Arendt’s intriguing theories on human beings and mass leaders by reading some of her best quotes here.)Find some thought-provoking Hannah Arendt quotes on love, life, and education below.“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”― ‘Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess’.“Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.”― ‘The Human Condition’.“Love, in distinction from friendship, is killed, or rather extinguished, the moment it is displayed in public.”- ‘The Portable Hannah Arendt’.“By its very nature, the beautiful is isolated from everything else. From beauty, no road leads to reality.”- ‘Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess’“Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.”― ‘The Human Condition’.“Men in plural […] can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.”― ‘The Human Condition’“The 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.”- ‘Crises Of The Republic’.“Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject."― ‘The Life Of The Mind’.“The monstrous sameness and pervasive ugliness so highly characteristic of the findings of modern psychology, and contrasting so obviously with the enormous variety and richness of overt human conduct, witness to the radical difference between the inside and the outside of the human body."― ‘The Life Of The Mind’.“Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.”- ‘Responsibility And Judgment’.“It interrupts any doing, any ordinary activities, no matter what they happen to be. All thinking demands a stop-and-think."― ‘The Life Of The Mind’.“What I cannot live with may not bother another man’s conscience. The result is that conscience will stand against conscience.”- ‘Crises Of The Republic’.“Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of life.”- Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy.“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”― ‘The Life Of The Mind’.“When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.”- ‘On Revolution’.“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable.”- ‘The Crisis In Education’.“To expect truth to come from thinking signifies that we mistake the need to think with the urge to know."― ‘The Life Of The Mind’.“…and if he suffers, he must suffer for what he has done, not for what he has caused others to suffer.”- ‘Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report On The Banality Of Evil’.“As citizens, we must prevent wrong-doing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong-sufferer, and spectator, is at stake; the City has been wronged."― ‘The Life Of The Mind’.“Thinking, existentially speaking, is a solitary but not a lonely business; solitude is that human situation in which I keep myself company."― ‘The Life Of The Mind’.“Every activity performed in public can attain an excellence never matched in privacy; for excellence, by definition, the presence of others is always required."― ‘The Human Condition’.“Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise.”- ‘Antisemitism’.“No human life, not even the life of the hermit in nature’s wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.”― ‘The Human Condition’.“Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover."― ‘The Human Condition’.“Wisdom is a virtue of old age, and it seems to come only to those who, when young, were neither wise nor prudent.”- ‘Men In Dark Times’.Short Hannah Arendt QuotesRead some short and intriguing Hannah Arendt quotes below.“Courage is indispensable because in politics not life but the world is at stake.”― ‘Between Past And Future’.“It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think."― ‘The Human Condition’.“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution."― ‘The New Yorker’.“Thinking beings have an urge to speak, speaking beings have an urge to think."― ‘The Life Of The Mind’.“But this was a moral question, and the answer to it may not have been legally relevant.”- ‘Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report On The Banality Of Evil’.“Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.”- ‘On Violence’.“In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfection.”- ‘Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess’.“Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future.”- ‘Crises of the Republic’.“It is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent.”- ‘The Portable Hannah Arendt’.“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”- ‘Men in Dark Times’.“The third world is not a reality, but an ideology.”- ‘Crises Of The Republic’.“The end of rebellion is liberation, while the end of revolution is the foundation of freedom.”- ‘On Revolution’.“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”― ‘The Life Of The Mind’.“Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians."― ‘Men In Dark Times’.Hannah Arendt Quotes On PoliticsHannah Arendt is best known as an influential political philosopher. Read some of her quotes on politics below.“Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.”- ‘Crises Of The Republic’.“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.”- ‘Crises Of The Republic’.“No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.”- ‘Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report On The Banality Of Evil’.“Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being."― ‘The Human Condition’.“The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error."― ‘Antisemitism’.“To remain in authority requires respect for the person or the office. The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.”- ‘On Violence’.“It is in the nature of a group and its power to turn against independence, the property of individual strength.”- ‘On Violence’.“Since one cannot educate adults, the word “education” has an evil sound in politics; there is a pretense of education, when the real purpose is coercion without the use of force.”- ‘Between Past And Future’.“Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.”- ‘On Revolution’.“To sum up: politically speaking, it is insufficient to say that power and violence are not the same. Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.”- ‘On Violence’.“Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.”- ‘The Burden Of Our Time’.“When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.”- ‘Crises Of The Republic’.“Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.”- ‘On Revolution’.
Hannah Arendt was a German-Jewish author and political philosopher best known for her intriguing accounts and opinions on numerous political regimes and events.
