Hannah Arendt

"We cannot understand history without understanding the power of human initiative and choice."

"The person who thinks they understand the world is often the most dangerous."

"Diversity is not a problem to be solved but a condition to be embraced."

"The greatest crime is not violence but the destruction of the human capacity for moral judgment."

"We become invisible when we are no longer listened to."

"The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution."

"We are not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights."

"Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history."

"The human condition is characterized by natality, the ability to begin anew."

"Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; it seeks to rule the inner man."

"Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things, is the one activity from which the Vita Contemplativa has kept itself free."

"Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as we think about it, it loses the power to offend us."

"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be either good or evil."

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing it to explicit doctrine."

"Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think."

"The only means of sustaining the civilized life is through the arts."

"Natality, the capacity to begin something new, is the central category of political thinking."

"No human being can live without passion; without passion the soul is dead."

"Glory is the only thing that can never become common property."

"The most despotic governments are those which make crime impossible."

"Speech and action reveal the unique, the unmistakable identity of the actor."

"History is not the soil of happiness."

"Promise and forgiveness are the only remedies for the unpredictability of the future."

"Loneliness is the common ground of tyrants and their victims."

"The capacity to judge is a specifically human ability; animals cannot judge."

"Organized oblivion is the prerequisite for the smoothly functioning totalitarian machinery."

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. One who lives fully is prepared to die at any moment."

"Authority requires unquestioning obedience; once disobeyed, it is gone."

"Thoughtlessness is the mark of all tyranny."

"The most important human endeavors are made not by individuals but by people connected in networks."