Hannah Arendt quotes

" Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom. " # Forgiveness # Action # Freedom

" When we were told that by freedom we understood free enterprise, we did very little to dispel this monstrous falsehood. Wealth and economic well-being, we have asserted, are the fruits of freedom, while we should have been the first to know that this kind of happiness has been an unmixed blessing only in this country, and it is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best conditions. " # Freedom # Politicians and Politics # Wealth

" War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford. " # War # Nations # Luxury

" Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. " # Story and Story-Telling

" The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution. " # Revolutions and Revolutionaries # Conservatives # Politicians and Politics

" Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love's own product. The child, this in-between to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together. " # Family # Love # Happiness

" If you ask a member of this generation two simple questions: How do you want the world to be in fifty years? and What do you want your life to be like five years from now? the answers are quite often preceded by Provided there is still a world and Provided I am still alive. To the often-heard question, Who are they, this new generation? one is tempted to answer, Those who hear the ticking. And to the other question, Who are they who utterly deny them? the answer may well be, Those who do not know, or refuse to face, things as they really are. " # Nuclear Age # Age and Aging # Love

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

" Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless. " # Action # Success # Attachment

" The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the easy life of the gods would be a lifeless life. " # Effort # Change # Life and Living