Hannah Arendt Quotes

Mathematics, the non-empirical science par excellence . . . the science of sciences, delivering the key to those laws of nature and the universe which are concealed by appearances.

It interrupts any doing, any ordinary activities, no matter what they happen to be. All thinking demands a stop-and-think.

The conflict between art and politics... cannot and must not be solved.

They must remember that they are constantly on the run, and that the world's reality is actually expressed by their escape.

It is obvious: if you do not accept something that assumes the form of ‘destiny,’ you not only change its ‘natural laws’ but also the laws of the enemy playing the role of fate.

... we may remember what the Romansthought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.

A functionary, when he really is nothing more than a functionary, is really a very dangerous gentleman.

The saving grace of all really great gifts is that the persons who bear their burden remain superior to what they have done, at least as long as the source of creativity is alive.

Scientific and philosophic truth have parted company.

every thought is strictly speaking an after-thought.

Absence of thought is indeed a powerful factor in human affairs, statistically speaking the most powerful, not just in the conduct of the many but in the conduct of all.

The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One against All.

The end of rebellion is liberation, while the end of revolution is the foundation of freedom.

I've begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world... Out of gratitude, I want to call my book on political theories Amor Mundi .

Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.

Exactly for the sake of what is new and revolutionary in every child, education must be conservative; it must preserve this newness and introduce it as a new thing into an old world.

We first become aware of freedom or its opposite in our intercourse with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves.

there is no class that cannot be wiped out if a sufficient number of its members are murdered.

Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation.

Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.

the greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons

Only the unlimited accumulation of power could bring about the unlimited accumulation of capital.

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.

Ideas as distinguished from events are never unprecedented.

Equality is the result of human organization. We are not born equal.

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