Wisdom of Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906 – December 4, 1975) was a German-born philosopher and historian, and was one of the most prominent political theorists in the last century. She wrote extensively on the topics of totalitarianism, and the nature of power and evil. The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition are two of her more well-known publications.

Below we list some words of wisdom from Hannah Arendt.

“We all carry fault within.”

“The greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.”

“Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it.”

“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.”

“If we do not know our own history, we are doomed to live it as though it were our private fate.”

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

“The history of humanity is not a hotel where someone can rent a room whenever it suits him; nor is it a vehicle which we board or get out of at random. Our past will be for us a burden beneath which we can only collapse for as long as we refuse to understand the present and fight for a better future. Only then — but from that moment on — will the burden become a blessing, that is, a weapon in the battle for freedom.”

“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.”

“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”

“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.”

“Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is 'in power' we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with ... disappears, 'his power' also vanishes.”

“I'm more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.”

“Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.”

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

“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.”

“Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and ... such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time-span that was given them on earth.”

“To think and to be fully alive are the same.”

“This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which had never been seen before. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down.”

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

Copyright © Scott Petullo, Stephen Petullo