Ken > Ken's Quotes

“We can no more master the past than we can undo it. But we can reconcile ourselves to it. The form for this is the lament, which arises out of all recollection.”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“The fermenta cognitionis which Lessing scattered into the world were not intended to communicate conclusions, but to stimulate others to independent thought, and this for no other purpose than to bring about a discourse between thinkers.”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“But even non-tragic plots become genuine events only when they are experienced a second time in the form of suffering by memory operating retrospectively and perceptively.”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate . . . but with his other hand he can jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more things than the others; after all, he is dead in his own lifetime and the real survivor.” —Franz Kafka, Diaries, entry of October 19, 1921”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“It is reasonable to assume that it is just as hard for rich people grown poor to believe in their poverty as it is for poor people turned rich to believe in their wealth; the former seem carried away by a recklessness of which they are totally unaware, the latter seem possessed by a stinginess which actually is nothing but the old ingrained fear of what the next day may bring.”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“the poem that philosophically makes good the defect of languages,”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“Weder dem Vergangenen anheimfallen noch dem Zukünftigen. Es kommt darauf an, ganz gegenwärtig zu sein.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk.”
― Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment

“Nothing is more transient in our world, less stable and solid, than that form of success which brings fame; nothing comes swifter and more readily than oblivion.”
― Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment

“Much more reliable will be the doubters and skeptics, not because skepticism is good or doubting wholesome, but because they are used to examine things and to make up their own minds. Best of all will be those who know only one thing for certain: that whatever else happens, as long as we live we shall have to live together with ourselves.”
― Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment

“it is rare to meet people who believe they possess the truth; instead, we are constantly confronted by those who are sure that they are right.”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“sui generis.”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“The critic as an alchemist practicing the obscure art of transmuting the futile elements of the real into the shining, enduring gold of truth,”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“the customary academic suspicion of anything that is not guaranteed to be mediocre need have been involved.”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“What seems paradoxical about everything that is justly called beautiful is the fact that it appears”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“Vernunft (reason) is traced back to its origin in the verb vernehmen (to perceive, to hear),”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“a metaphor establishes a connection which is sensually perceived in its immediacy and requires no interpretation, while an allegory always proceeds from an abstract notion and then invents something palpable to represent it almost at will.”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“Metaphors are the means by which the oneness of the world is poetically brought about.”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate . . . but with his other hand he can jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more things than the others; after all, he is dead in his own lifetime and the real survivor.”
― Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times

“(Of Honor without Fame/Of Greatness without Splendor/Of Dignity without Pay);”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“Like one who keeps afloat on a shipwreck by climbing to the top of a mast that is already crumbling. But from there he has a chance to give a signal leading to his rescue.” —Walter Benjamin in a letter to Gerhard Scholem dated April 17, 1931”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“Augustine’s caritas is the basis for founding new communities on common moral judgment as well as the existential, determining “fact” of shared history.”
― Hannah Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine

“Without a politically guaranteed public realm, freedom lacks the worldly space to make its appearance.”
― Hannah Arendt, Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953-1975

“The Crisis is arrivd when we must assert our Rights, or Submit to every Imposition that can be heap’d upon us; till custom and use, will make us as tame, & abject Slaves, as the Blacks we Rule over with such arbitrary Sway,”
― Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

“Once transposed into metaphor, slavery could serve to unite white colonists of whatever region under a banner of white exclusivity.”
― Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

“The decision to deploy slavery as a metaphor for white grievances had devastating consequences for those who were actually enslaved: it helped ensure that abolition would not become a revolutionary cause, Bradley argues.”
― Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

“The truth is that we might never have revolted against Britain if some of the founders had not understood that slavery empowered them to do so;”
― Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

“In the weeks and months that followed, thousands upon thousands of protesters took to the streets in all fifty states, in large cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, and New York, as well as in suburbs, small and medium-sized towns, and rural areas. Protests erupted even in places as far away as Hong Kong, South Africa, Germany, South Korea, and New Zealand. Never before had a Black rebellion been met with such widespread support by people of all colors, classes, and walks of life.”
― Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

“But the response by police was brutal, encouraged by President Donald Trump, who condemned the protests; blasted the “Black Lives Matter” slogan, calling it a “symbol of hate”; and pledged his allegiance to “law and order.”
― Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

“Those same troops were nowhere in sight months later when an overwhelmingly white mob, composed of white nationalists and Trump supporters, stormed the United States Capitol, smashing windows and ransacking offices while lawmakers were in the process of certifying president-elect Joseph Biden’s electoral victory.”
― Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story