Hannah Arendt Quotes

What would it mean if we lived in a world in which no one held out for the possibility of substantial political equality, or for a full cessation of colonial practices - if no one held out for those things because they were impossible?

Politics is cyclical.

Though the general principles of statecraft have survived the rise and fall of empires, every increase in knowledge has brought about changes in the political, economic, and social structure.

Whatever is the strongest power in society will obtain the governing authority; and a change in the political constitution cannot be durable unless preceded or accompanied by an altered distribution of power in society itself

The spectacle of American politics resembles that of swarms of insects changing from worms to wings. They must get the wings or die.

There can be no finality in politics.

Political assumptions can remain constant for long periods and then change very quickly.

Bureaucracies have a natural tendency not to cooperate, coordinate or consolidate with each other. They won't cooperate with each other - unless they are forced to do so by political level authority.

Our political organization, based as it is on an eighteenth-century separation of powers and on a nineteenth-century nationalist state, is generally recognized to be semiobselete.

Perhaps the challenge is to invent the political structure that will give conscience a better chance against authority.

Peoples have come to experience that political structures and divisions of power are not immutable. Nor will they perceive the distribution of wealth and resources between nations to be unalterably ordained by heaven and incapable of drastic rearrangement by the less than gentle manipulation of man.

There is no power on earth which can be kept long confined within a narrow limit. It cannot be kept compressed too long to allow of expansion at a subsequent period.

Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.

In politics nothing is immutable. Events carry within them an invincible power.

It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.

I think we've seen at least the beginnings of rather significant social and economic change in the Muslim world, which I think will in due course lead to more political change.

The problem with the West is that they start with political reform going towards democracy.

I'm very proud that I was a Goldwater Girl. And then my political beliefs changed over time.

We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism.

We must remember, elections are short-term efforts. Revolutions are long-term projects.

Our society will always remain an unstable and explosive compound as long as political power is vested in the masses and economic power in the classes. In the end one of these powers will rule. Either the plutocracy will buy up the democracy, or the democracy will vote away the plutocracy.

Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.

America's political system used to be about the pursuit of happiness. Now More and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered.