Verified Quotes
Every quote on this page is verified against the named source work.
Hannah Arendt, German-American political theorist who examined the nature of power, evil, and the life of the mind, gets quoted everywhere and sourced almost nowhere. The 9 quotes below are different: each one is checked word for word against the cited work, starting with Responsibility and Judgment, not copied from aggregator sites that pass misattributions along. The source is named under every line, so you can trace each quote back to the page it came from.
Read Hannah Arendt's full profile and how they reason →1 verified quote
On realizing an ordinary colleague enabled something terrible:
The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem
3 verified quotes
On the coworker who goes along with a bad decision to avoid conflict:
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment
On slowing down before joining a pile on at work:
Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment
On trusting your own judgment when the group consensus feels off:
The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge, but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly.Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment
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On why a solo effort at work is stalling and a coalition might not:
Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert.Hannah Arendt, On Violence
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On deciding whether to tell a boss an unwelcome truth:
Nobody has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other.Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future
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On choosing solitude to think clearly before a big decision:
Thinking, existentially speaking, is a solitary but not a lonely business.Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind
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On explaining a hard year to your kids without over explaining it:
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times
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On feeling most alone inside a marriage that looks fine from outside:
Loneliness is not solitude. Solitude requires being alone whereas loneliness shows itself most sharply in company with others.Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism