Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Johanna "Hannah" Arendtwas a German-born Jew and American political theorist. Though often described as a philosopher, she rejected that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular" and instead described herself as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact that "men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world." She escaped Europe during the Holocaust, becoming an American citizen. Her works deal with the nature of power, and the subjects...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth14 October 1906
CityHanover, Germany
CountryGermany
Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.
The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.
Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future.
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.
Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.
Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless.
As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.
Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.
There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.
Generally speaking, violence always arises out of impotence. It is the hope of those who have no power ...
... the space left to freedom is very small.ends are inherent in human nature and the same for all.
Bureaucracy, the rule of nobody.
Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wanderhelplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man's lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities--a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.