Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

Quotes

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

• As witnesses not of our intentions but of our conduct, we can be true or false, and the hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. 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.

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

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

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

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