The Origins of Totalitarianism

by Hannah Arendt

The conviction that everything that happens on earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces.

We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion.

The “idols” are mere organizational devices, familiar from the ritual of secret societies, which also used to frighten their members into secretiveness by means of frightful, awe-inspiring symbols.