Hannah Arendt Quotes

Because I like people, when they come up to me in the street and want a chat and a selfie I'm very flattered. I do miss a lot of trains because of it!

Because of what I've chosen to do for my work in the world, almost every time that there's something that I'm afraid to do that I need to do, I have to do it in front of other people. It makes me feel exposed.

I don't rely on the media. I usually average one speech a day for 25 years. People know me because I'm out there.

First one works alone through the mind, then before the public through experience.

How you think determines how you act. How you act in turn determines how others react to you.

I'll be out with my friends and be recognized, and little girls will ask me for my autograph. It is so much fun living out your dream. It, like, totally reflects me 100%.

Soon as I see her walk up in the club, I'm a flirt. Winking eyes at me, when I roll up on them dubs, I'm a flirt. Sometimes when I'm with my chick on the low, I'm a flirt. And when she's wit her man looking at me, damn right, I'm a flirt.

There must be engagement: there must be protest.

I think it's more important to show your work to the public.

As a child, I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, and to never, ever make a spectacle of yourself ... All of which I've earned a living doing.

Thinking and feeling that have to do with action in association with others is as much a social mode of behavior as is the most overt cooperative or hostile act.

And what better way to get people talking than by creating a new word.

All real democracy is an attempt like that of a jolly hostess to bring the shy people out.

It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does.

Things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience or joint action.

The action is in the interaction.

The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge.

It is better to have a Church that is wounded but out in the streets than a Church that is sick because it is closed in on itself.

I don’t work. I merely inflict myself on the public.

Every act is an act of self definition.

Interface, of the resonant interval as 'where the action is', whether chemical, psychic or social, involves touch.

I'm just a guy. I get treated like I'm famous but I don't take it seriously. I take the time people take out to check me out very, very seriously.

That the sight of people attracts still other people, is something that city planners and city architectural designers seem to find incomprehensible. They operate on the premise that city people seek the sight of emptiness, obvious order and quiet. Nothing could be less true. The presences of great numbers of people gathered together in cities should not only be frankly accepted as a physical fact... they should also be enjoyed as an asset and their presence celebrated.

I realized I was going to get through this disappointing service, and anyway, you have to be somewhere: better here, where I have heard truth spoken so often, than, say, at the DMV, or home alone, orbiting my own mind. And it's good to be out where others can see you, so you can't be your ghastly spoiled self. It forces you to act slightly more elegantly, and this improves your thoughts, and thereby the world.

If you are what you do, then when you don't, you aren't.