The common prejudice that love is as common as “romance” may be due to the fact that we all learned about it first through poetry. But the poets fool us; they are the only ones to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.
hannah Arendtquotes
1906 - 1975
Having witnessed the horrors of the Nazi regime first hand, German-born American philosopher, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), is known not only for her great contributions to political theory, but also her undaunted and daring spirit.
After earning her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Heidelberg, Arendt uncovered antisemitism propaganda within the Nazi Party and spoke against it. A Jew herself, Arendt was arrested and jailed by the Gestapo. Incredibly, she escaped and fled to Paris in 1933, only to be later taken to a Nazi concentration camp. She escaped again and made her way to New York.
She became a naturalized U.S. citizen a decade later, and published her famous book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. Tracing the rise of antisemitism, racism and imperialism in the West, this book firmly established Arendt as a philosopher. Previously, she worked as a journalist and editor, but with the succession of more publications she found her way as a lecturer and professor at numerous universities.
The Human Condition, a critique of the modern world using Classical ideologies, is considered her philosophical masterwork, while The Life of the Mind is a provocative analysis of the relationship between will and freedom.
Her distinguished writing won her both acclaim and criticism. Most controversial was her book on the trial of Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann (Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil), where she claimed he was more “thoughtless” than evil. Despite this, her original and provocative views remain the basis for many modern political theories.
Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time.
Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
defining / error / Meaning / reveals / Storytelling
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.