Hannah Arendt Quotes

The public always prefers to be reassured. There are those whose job this is. There are only too many.

If you want peace of mind I suggest you resign as general manager of the universe.

I should not mind anything at all.

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future.

To leave positions of great responsibility and authority is to die a little, but the time comes when that must be faced.

Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes. For they have the authority of years, and out of their intermission do win to themselves a kind of grace-like newness. But the eldest of the present, and newest of the past Language, is the best.

I dreamed... in the black of night a man asks all the questions he dare not ask by daylight. For me, the past years, only one question has remained. Why would the gods take my eyes and my strength, yet condemn me to linger on so long, frozen and forgotten? What use could they have for an old done man like me? ... I remember, Sam. I still remember. Remember what? Dragons, Aemon whispered.

Her mind was all disorder. The past, present, future, every thing was terrible.

To be contented—that’s for the cows.

Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down, before they knew their endings.

We love and live in power; it is the spirit's end. Mind must subdue; to conquer is its life.

Cultivate peace of mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything else follows naturally.

If a man loses a dear friend, he looks around and sees many friends come to console and comfort him. If a man loses his wealth, after a little thought he will realize that the delight that came from wealth will be restored by finding more. Thus he forgets his loss and is consoled. But if a man's heart is deprived of peace, where will he find it again, how will he replace it?

Freedom is baffling: men having it often know not they have it till it is gone and they no longer have it.

Sir, sorrow is inherent in humanity. As you cannot judge two and two to be either five, or three, but certainly four, so, when comparing a worse present state with a better which is past, you cannot but feel sorrow. It is not cured by reason, but by the incursion of present objects, which bear out the past.

You are not going to be happy if you lose to a goal in the last minute. It is difficult to take and difficult to get out of your mind.

Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.

Business men go down with their businesses because they like the old way so well they cannot bring themselves to change. One sees them all about - men who do not know that yesterday is past, and who woke up this morning with their last year's ideas.

How easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it.

When you have everything, you have everything to lose.

Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

No one ever loved you like him. And no one ever took it away so completely. But it's here. Look around.

A mind free from all disturbances is Yoga.

My favorite piece of technical writing: Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.

Tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.