543 Quotes by Hannah Arendt

  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.

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  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    (...) pois é óbvio que, por mais que um pensador se preocupe com a eternidade, no instante em que se dispõe a escrever os seus pensamentos deixa de estar fundamentalmente preocupado com a eternidade e volta sua atenção para a tarefa de legar aos pósteros algum vestígio deles. p28

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  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    Good works, because they must be forgotten instantly, can never become part of the world; they come and go,leaving no trace. They truly are not of this world.

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  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    Kant ... was also quite aware that "the urgent need" of reason is both different from and "more than mere quest and desire for knowledge." Hence, the distinguishing of the two faculties, reason and intellect, coincides with a distinction between two altogether different mental activities, thinking and knowing.

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  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    Manipulations of opinion, insofar as they are inspired by well-defined interests, have limited goals; their effect, however, if they happen to touch upon an issue of authentic concern, is no longer subject to their control and may easily produce consequences they never foresaw or intended.

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  • Author Hannah Arendt
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    Exasperation with the threefold frustration of action -- the unpredictability of its outcome, the irreversibility of the process, and the anonymity of its authors -- is almost as old as recorded history. It has always been a great temptation, for men of action no less than for men of thought, to find a substitute for action in the hope that the realm of human affairs may escape the haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in a plurality of agents.

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