Hannah Arendt Quotes

We all carry fault within.

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.

If this practice [of totalitarianism] is compared with […] [the desert] of tyranny, it seems as if a way had been found to set the desert itself in motion, to let loose a sand storm that could cover all parts of the inhabited earth. The conditions under which we exist today in the field of politics are indeed threatened by these devastating sand storms.

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.

What really distinguishes this generation in all countries from earlier generations … is its determination to act, its joy in action, the assurance of being able to change things by one’s own efforts.

For no matter what learned scientists may say, race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of man but his unnatural death.

Every organization of men, be it social or political, ultimately relies on man’s capacity for making promises and keeping them.

What I cannot live with may not bother another man’s conscience. The result is that conscience will stand against conscience.

Nietzsche … has caused [philosophers] so much confusion.

The emotions I feel are no more meant to be shown in their unadulterated state than the inner organs by which we live.

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world – and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end – is being destroyed.

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