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" Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx. "

Hannah Arendt

Thought

Beginning

End

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" The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution. "

" Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda. "

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

" The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error. "

Hannah Arendt

Leader

Error

" Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think. "

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

" The more dubious and uncertain an instrument violence has become in international relations, the more it has gained in reputation and appeal in domestic affairs, specifically in the matter of revolution. "

" Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up. "

" Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence. "

" Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise. "

" Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being. "

" 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. "

Hannah Arendt

Hypocrite

Evil

" The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. "

" Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one. "

" War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford. "

" Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of life. "

" The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade. "

" The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. "

" 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. "

" To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious. "

Hannah Arendt

Free

" Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. "

" The Third World is not a reality but an ideology. "

" Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity. "

" It is my contention that civil disobediences are nothing but the latest form of voluntary association, and that they are thus quite in tune with the oldest traditions of the country. "

" 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. "

" Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance. "

" There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous. "

" In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism. "

Hannah Arendt

Escape

Try

" Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse. "