“Totalitarian politics—far from being simply antisemitic or racist or imperialist or communist—use and abuse their own ideological and political elements until the… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“This new situation, in which "humanity" has in effect assumed the role formerly ascribed to nature or history, would mean in this… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“That concentration camps were ultimately provided for the same groups in all countries, even though there were considerable differences in the treatment… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“Rule by decree has conspicuous advantages for the domination of far-flung territories with heterogeneous populations and for a policy of oppression. Its… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“Naturalization, on the other hand, also proved to be a failure. The whole naturalization system of European countries fell apart when it… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“Only the unlimited accumulation of power could bring about the unlimited accumulation of capital.” — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
If this practice [of totalitarianism] is compared with […] [the desert] of tyranny, it seems as if a way had been found… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“… the Nazis, without admitting it, learned as much from American gangster organizations as their propaganda, admittedly, learned from American business publicity.” — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“The fall of the protecting class walls transformed the slumbering majorities behind all parties into one great unorganized, structureless mass of furious… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“The temporary alliance between the elite and the mob rested largely on this genuine delight with which the former watched the latter… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“For it is evident that those who regard the whole earth as their future territory will stress the organ of domestic violence… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“Somehow it was not the fault of the born adventurers, of those who by their very nature dwelt outside society and outside… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
It belongs among the refinements of totalitarian government in our century that they don't permit their opponents to die a great, dramatic… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“The success of totalitarian movements among the masses meant the end of two illusions of democratically ruled countries in general and of… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“The totalitarian movements aim at and succeed in organizing masses—not classes, like the old interest parties of the Continental nation-states; citizens with… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“It was characteristic of the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and of the Communist movements in Europe after 1930 that… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“Totalitarian propaganda perfects the techniques of mass propaganda, but it neither invents them nor originates their themes. These were prepared for them… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“THE DECLARATION of the Rights of Man at the end of the eighteenth century was a turning point in history. It meant… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“Equality of condition, though it is certainly a basic requirement for justice, is nevertheless among the greatest and most uncertain ventures of… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“It means, first, that everything that appears in public can be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest possible publicity. For us,… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
What really distinguishes this generation in all countries from earlier generations ... is its determination to act, its joy in action, the assurance of… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world. — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“Nationalism always preserved this initial intimate loyalty to the government and never quite lost its function of preserving a precarious balance between nation and… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedience's taking the law into his… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“What imperialists actually wanted was expansion of political power without the foundation of the body politic. Imperialist expansion had been touched off by a… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for their abundance. — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image