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Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.

– Hannah Arendt

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If you ask a member of this generation two simple questions: How do you want the world to be in fifty years? and What do you want your life to be like five years from now? the answers are quite often preceded by Provided there is still a world and Provided I am still alive. To the often-heard question, Who are they, this new generation? one is tempted to answer, Those who hear the ticking. And to the other question, Who are they who utterly deny them? the answer may well be, Those who do not know, or refuse to face, things as they really are.

– Hannah Arendt

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It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.

– Hannah Arendt

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Jean Bertrand Aristide Haitian president elected by large majority, twice overthrown by U.S. supported forces. Take my hand. If you see me stumble, hold me up. If I feel you weaken, I will support you. Let us trust one another, keep faith with one another, and never falter. Let us keep the lamp of solidarity lit, and move forward.

– Hannah Arendt

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No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.

– Hannah Arendt

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Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.

– Hannah Arendt

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Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up.

– Hannah Arendt

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Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.

– Hannah Arendt

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

– Hannah Arendt

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The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.

– Hannah Arendt

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Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise.

– Hannah Arendt

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Totalitarianism begins in contempt for what you have. The second step is the notion: “Things must change—no matter how, Anything is better than what we have.” Totalitarian rulers organize this kind of mass sentiment, and by organizing it articulate it, and by articulating it make the people somehow love it. They were told before, thou shalt not kill; and they didn’t kill. Now they are told, thou shalt kill; and although they think it’s very difficult to kill, they do it because it's now part of the code of behavior. They learn whom to kill and how to kill and how to do it together. This is the much talked about Gleichschaltung—the coordination process. You are coordinated not with the powers that be, but with your neighbor—coordinated with the majority. But instead of communicating with the other you are now glued to him. And you feel of course marvelous. Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another.

– Hannah Arendt

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Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.

– Hannah Arendt

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

– Hannah Arendt

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

– Hannah Arendt

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War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.

– Hannah Arendt

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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

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What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

– Hannah Arendt

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What really distinguishes this generation in all countries from earlier generations is its determination to act, its joy in action, the assurance of being able to change things by one's own efforts.

– Hannah Arendt

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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

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