Hannah Arendt
German-American · 1906–1975
German-American political theorist whose work on totalitarianism, authority, and the nature of evil remains profoundly influential.
Wikipedia ↗“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”
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“The banality of evil.”
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“The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them.”
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“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
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“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”
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“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
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“No one has the right to obey.”
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Published posthumously; reflects Arendt's lifelong stance on individual moral responsibility.