Hannah Arendt Quotes

If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to 'demand' its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.

I have a morality. I don't know if it's the best morality. And I do like thinking. If people perceive that as a moral intellectualism, that's fine. That's up to them to decide.

To be moral involves taking a position towards that matrix, thinking critically about what is taken for granted.

It’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.

True knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the present, is rather imaginary than real.

Compassion without wisdom is dangerous. It's what enables people to support the 'underdog,' even if the underdog is evil

… you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.

I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and think what we ought to do about it.

There's a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior.

In ethics, we don't make progress by discovering pre-existent truths; we do so by solving problems.

If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.

[R]eason is... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will.

If the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant in this respect almost alone among the philosophers was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

The end justifies the means only when the means used are such as actually bring about the desired and desirable end.

It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of reason than immorality.

Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about ordinary language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.

The cause of all human evils is the not being able to apply general principles to special cases.

Conscience is the reason employed about questions of right and wrong.

An ethic isn't a fact you can look up. It's a way of thinking.

Philosophy is fundamentally about how you come to terms with living your life and trying to do it in a wise manner, and, for me, that means decently and compassionately and courageously and so forth.

The right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

You are wrong, sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.

There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.