Hannah Arendt Quotes

The crude real will not by itself yield truth.

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.

All true knowledge contradicts common sense.

Truth is more than a mental exercise.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

The ultimate aim of the human mind, in all its efforts, is to become acquainted with Truth.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

The typical person has no trouble believing without knowing. What people need to realize is simply that you do not need to believe to know.

Science is not wisdom.

Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down".

Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.

Knowledge, or more expressively truth,--for knowledge is truth received into our intelligence,--truth is an ideal whole.

What, concretely, is Enlightenment ?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around.

Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.

After all, the ultimate goal of all research is not objectivity, but truth.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

There are two languages: one as things seem to us and the other of knowledge.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

Science is nothing but perception.

To every object there correspond an ideally closed system of truths that are true of it and, on the other hand, an ideal system of possible cognitive processes by virtue of which the object and the truths about it would be given to any cognitive subject.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.