Hannah Arendt

"Consciousness is the most precious human gift and the one we most take for granted."

"Authority requires no force; it is the opposite of force."

"Bureaucracy is a form of government whose principle of legitimation and whose means of rule are hidden."

"Tradition used to tell us how to live; now we must learn ourselves."

"The social sciences have not yet come to terms with the fact that man is a political being."

"War has become too important a matter to be left to the military."

"The past attacks us in the form of questions we cannot avoid."

"Superfluousness begins when we have enough, but this is the moment when totalitarianism becomes possible."

"True revolution can only come from an authentic experience of freedom."

"Modern totalitarianism is not the extension of absolute monarchy but a radically new form of government."

"Language is not merely one of man's possessions in the world; it is an expression of the condition of being human."

"The nation-state is the form in which man has organized himself politically since the modern age."

"Only in the risking of one's life does man escape the control of nature and establish himself as a human being."

"Violence is the sign of a government that has lost legitimacy."

"The only efficient reply to propaganda is more and better news and information."

"Conscience is not infallible; it too can be corrupted by ideology."

"The danger of violence lies not only in the immediate harm it inflicts but in its tendency to corrupt those who use it."

"Obedience is not a virtue in the political realm; questioning is."

"The rise of the modern individual comes with the loss of the traditional bonds of community."

"We must distinguish between the image we present to the world and the reality we live in private."

"The capacity to begin something new is the mark of human freedom."

"Every totalitarian movement begins with the promise of complete salvation."

"Men are equal as members of a group, never as human beings in general."

"The destruction of traditions is as much a part of human history as their creation."

"Political action is the most human of all activities because it requires both thought and speech."

"We are condemned to be free, even when we try to escape freedom."

"The highest human capacity is the ability to begin something new."

"The public realm is the common world we share with others."

"Mass society is characterized by the isolation of the individual despite physical proximity to others."

"Revolutions occur when the old forms of legitimacy have collapsed."