Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times | Are.na

“The existence of a public realm,” Arendt observed, “and the world's subsequent transformation into a community of things which gathers men together and relates them to each other depends entirely on permanence.”

Hannah Arendt powerfully explained “the constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people who can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and w... See more

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

Arendt believed that “laughter makes available confidence in our fellow man, confidence in the human power of resistance — against ideology and terror, against obscurantism, repression, dogmatism, and despotism.” She spoke of laughter as a form of “self-sovereignty” and elsewhere of a “kind of laughing courage.”