Assembly Quote by Hannah Arendt

“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.”

Hannah Arendt

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.2 out of 5 (9 ratings)

Assembly Association Blessing Business Communication Conditions Country Economic Enterprise Falsehood Firsts Free enterprise Freedom Freedom of assembly Freedom of speech Fruit Has beens Kind Knows Littles Minors Monstrous Political Political freedom Should Should have Should have been Speech Understood Wealth Well being Wells

More by Hannah Arendt

“It means, first, that everything that appears in public can be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest possible publicity. For us, appearance—something that is being seen and heard by others as well as by ourselves—constitutes reality. Compared with the reality which comes from being seen and heard, even the greatest forces of intimate life—the passions of the…

Hannah Arendt

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

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

Image

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

Hannah Arendt

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 state on one hand, between the nationals of an atomized society on the other. Native citizens of a nation-state frequently looked down upon naturalized citizens, those who had received their rights by law and not by…

Hannah Arendt

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

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 curious kind of economic crisis, the overproduction of capital and the emergence of "superfluous" money, the result of oversaving, which could no longer find productive investment within national borders. For the first time, investment of power…

Hannah Arendt

the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the…

Hannah Arendt

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

Hannah Arendt

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

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

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

Image

Explore all 405 Hannah Arendt quotes

More Assembly quotes

We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at…

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Image

Mac [Barnett] and I prank each other during our presentation. We show baby pictures of each other looking completely ridiculous. I can't believe the frilly shirt that I'm in, and Mac's wearing a sailor suit and playing a toy piano. That's a perfect example of a good prank, where we have three hundred people literally laughing in our faces, three…

Jory John

She went from opera, park, assembly, play, To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day. To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea,…

Alexander Pope

Image

We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind,…

Eleanor Roosevelt

Image

Club: An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.

Samuel Johnson

Image

Yet if anyone cares to read over the now crumbling minutes giving an account of the meetings at which the Italian Fasci di Combattimento were founded, he will find not a doctrine but a series of pointers... It may be objected that this program implies a return to the guilds (corporazioni). No matter!... I therefore hope this assembly will accept…

Benito Mussolini

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support - to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective - to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak - and to…

John F. Kennedy

“Liberalism is a creation of the seventeenth century, fathered by British philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). For Locke, liberalism means limited government, the rule of law, due process, liberty, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, separation of church and state, and separation of government powers into branches that oversee each other’s authority.”

Peter Boghossian