Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
Philosophers
Hannah Arendt
Born in 1906, Hannah Arendt fled Nazi Germany for the U.S. The Origins of Totalitarianism dissected modern domination; the Eichmann trial yielded "the banality of evil." Her warning sharpens as democracies weaken.
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Hannah Arendt's Other Quotes
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition.
The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.
No one has the right to obey.
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
Related Quotes
The meaning of a word is its use in the language.
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Understanding is, in its essence, an event of effective history.
-- Hans-Georg Gadamer
One who knows how to speak does not seek to be right but seeks to understand.
-- Hans-Georg Gadamer
The first thing we can say of life is that it is a nexus.
-- Wilhelm Dilthey
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
-- Viktor Frankl
Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
-- Viktor Frankl