Violence Quotes by Hannah Arendt

Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.

— Hannah Arendt

Violence is an expression of impotence.

— Hannah Arendt

the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.

— Hannah Arendt

The climax of terror is reached when the police state begins to devour its own children, when yesterday's executioner becomes today's victim.

— Hannah Arendt

Generally speaking, violence always arises out of impotence. It is the hope of those who have no power.

— Hannah Arendt

The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world.

— Hannah Arendt

The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One against All.

— Hannah Arendt

Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar…

— Hannah Arendt

Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant…

— Hannah Arendt

“For it is evident that those who regard the whole earth as their future territory will stress the organ of domestic violence…

— Hannah Arendt

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but…

— Hannah Arendt

Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future.…

— Hannah Arendt

The more dubious and uncertain an instrument violence has become in international relations, the more it has gained in reputation and appeal…

— Hannah Arendt

the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is…

— Hannah Arendt

“The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One against All. And this latter is…

— Hannah Arendt

“These definitions coincide with the terms which, since Greek antiquity, have been used to define the forms of government as the rule…

— Hannah Arendt