Hannah Arendt Quotes

What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge.

The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.

In other philosophies, my questions would get answered to some degree, but then I would have a follow-up question and there would be no answer. The logic would dead-end. In Scientology you can find answers for anything you could ever think to ask. These are not pushed off on you as, 'This is the answer, you have to believe in it.' In Scientology you discover for yourself what is true for you.

It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.

Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.

The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff.

Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge.

We must re-center philosophy within our frame of reference which I think is the way to deal with it.

There are moments in life where the question of knowing whether one might think otherwise than one thinks and perceive otherwise than one sees is indispensable if one is to continue to observe or reflect... What is philosophy today... if it does not consist in, instead of legitimizing what we already know, undertaking to know how and how far it might be possible to think otherwise?

So this is my attempt to give a preliminary - probably far too crude - account of how philosophy by showing can really teach us. The attempts we make to work through problems by reasoning always presuppose starting points, and even the most self-critical philosophers adopt some of those starting points simply by picking them up from the social environments in which they grow up.

In philosophy, when we make use of false principles, we depart the farther from the knowledge of truth and wisdom exactly in proportion to the care with which we cultivate them, and apply ourselves to the deduction of diverse consequences from them, thinking that we are philosophizing well, while we are only departing the farther from the truth; from which it must be inferred that they who have learned the least of all that has been hitherto distinguished by the name of philosophy are the most fitted for the apprehension of truth.

Thinking is one of the most important weapons in dealing with problems

The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man.

The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.

The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.

I think what attracts me about the Electric Monk is that it's such an eloquent example of the futility of belief for belief's sake. I mean there's only any point in believing something if it's true.

Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created

The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth.

For me writing is foremost a mode of thinking and when it works well, an act of discovery

Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult 'What is that?

Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right question...awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions.

All the progress we have made in philosophy ... is the result of that methodical skepticism which is the element of human freedom.

Here is the beginning of philosophy: a recognition of the conflicts between men, a search for their cause, a condemnation of mere opinion .. . and the discovery of a standard of judgement.

Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts).