Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954 Quotes

“If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man.”
― Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism

“Words used for the purpose of fighting lose their quality of speech; they become clichés. The extent to which clichés have crept into our everyday language and discussions may well indicate the degree to which we not only have deprived ourselves of the faculty of speech, but are ready to use more effective means of violence than bad books (and only bad books can be good weapons) with which to settle our arguments.”
― Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism

“(2) Bolshevism is understood in religious terms. “What believers of traditional religions ascribe to God … Bolsheviks ascribe to the allegedly scientific laws of social development.” (This quid pro quo of God and historical law has by now apparently convinced everybody who believes that neither the existence of God nor that of historical laws can be demonstrated scientifically.)”
― Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism

“In the simplicity of everyday life one rule reigns supreme: Each good action, even for a ‘bad cause,’ adds some real goodness to the world; each bad action even for the most beautiful of all ideals makes our common world a little worse.”
― Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism

“[A]ll historical and political evidence clearly points to the more-than-intimate connection between the lesser and the greater evil.… The natural conclusion from the true insight into a century so fraught with danger of the greatest evil should be a radical negation of the whole concept of the lesser evil in politics, because far from protecting us against the greater ones, the lesser evils have invariably led us into them.”
― Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism