Hannah Arendt Quotes

We know that we are not collectively guilty, so how can we accuse any other nation, no matter what some of its people have done, of being collectively guilty?

We should demand his blood not from the Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves. Let us make our reckoning today.

If the Barbarians are destroyed, who will we then be able to blame for the bad things?

Do not you know that people's sin fall upon the prince, and the prince's sin falls upon the people?

I don't believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

Chacun exige d'e" tre innocent, a' tout prix, me" me si, pour cela, il faut accuser le genre humain et le ciel. Everyone insists on his or her innocence, at all costs, even if it means accusing the rest of the human race and heaven.

Sin with the multitude, and your responsibility and guilt are as great and as truly personal, as if you alone had done the wrong

We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.

As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons.

Forbear to lay the guilt of a few on the many.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

The classical case is that of the starving man who steals a loaf of bread. That he should be allowed to go free is understandable enough; but it is less understandable that 'society's' obligation not to let him starve should devolve upon one baker chosen at random and not on society as a whole.

It seems eternally forgotten, that men, in their collective capacity as nations, may be, and often are, guilty of the same follies, faults, and crimes, that they can commit as individuals in the common relations of social life; that they may be just as ill-humored, or resentful, or unreasonable, or ferocious, or wicked; that their good or bad passions enter with them into cabinets, and senates, and public meetings, just as they do into drawing-rooms, or studies, or their family dining-rooms.

We may not all be equally guilty. But we are all equally responsible for building a decent and just society.

It's incumbent on all of us to remember our history and not repeat our past sins.

If you are going to call out your teammates, you have to call out yourself, too. You can't just separate yourself from the rest, because if you are going to get 90 percent of the credit when you win, you have to be willing to take 90 percent of the blame when you lose.

My interpretation is different. God asks Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" [Genesis 4:9] And Cain answers "Lo yadati, "I don't know" or "I didn't know." Then comes a period, followed by "Am I my brother's keeper?"

We are each of us responsible for the evil we may have prevented.

...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty - all are responsible.

where everybody is guilty, nobody is.

Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members (e.g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in his public violation of justice.

The world is our responsibility. We cannot evade it.