Hannah Arendt Quotes on Freedom
Hannah Arendt was a 20th-century German-American political theorist whose work shaped post-war thinking about totalitarianism, political action, and moral responsibility. This page collects quotes attributed to Hannah Arendt on the topic of freedom, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.”
On Violence -
“No one has the right to obey . Paradoxical aphorism asserting the responsibility of everyone to engage in critical thinking in response to unjustly oppressive commands or demands against rationality or humanity , implying automatic obedience to tyranny as a betrayal of both, and referencing Immanuel Kant 's philosophical perspectives, in a radio interview with Joachim Fest (9 November 1964); also often rendered as " Niemand hat das Recht zu gehorchen.”
Kein Mensch hat das Recht zu gehorchen. -
“Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity , because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.”
The Human Condition(1958) | The Human Condition (1958), part 3, chapter 16 -
“It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.”
The Human Condition(1958) | The Human Condition (1958)