Responsibility and Judgment Quotes

“When I think back to the last two decades since the end of the last war, I have the feeling that this moral issue has lain dormant because it was concealed by something about which it is indeed much more difficult to speak and with which it is almost impossible to come to terms-the horror itself in its naked monstrosity. When we were first confronted with it, it seemed, not only to me but to many others, to transcend all moral categories as it certainly exploded all juridical standards. You could express this in various ways. I used to say, this is something which should never have happened for men will be unable either to punish it or forgive it. We shall not be able to become reconciled to it, to come to terms with it, as we mush with everything that is past either because it was bad and we need to overcome it or because it was good and we cannot bear to let it go.”
― Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment

“When I think back to the last two decades since the end of the last war, I have the feeling that this moral issue has lain dormant because it was concealed by something about which it is indeed much more difficult to speak and with which it is almost impossible to come to terms-the horror itself in its naked monstrosity. When we were first confronted with it, it seemed, not only to me but to many others, to transcend all moral categories as it certainly exploded all juridical standards. You could express this in various ways. I used to say, this is something which should never have happened for men will be unable either to punish it or forgive it. We shall not be able to becoe reconciled to it, to come to terms with it, as we mush with everything that is past either because it was bad and we need to overcome it or because it was good and we cannot bear to let it go.”
― 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

“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

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

“Whoever takes upon himself political responsibility will always come to the point where he says with Hamlet: The time is out of joint: O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right! To set the time aright means to renew the world, and this we can do because we all arrived at one time or another as newcomers in a world which was there before us and will still be there when we are gone, when we shall have left its burden to our successors.”
― Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment

“And as for the nation, it is obvious that every generation, by virtue of being born into a historical continuum, is burdened by the sins of the fathers as it is blessed with the deeds of the ancestors.”
― Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment