Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever.

the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.

The presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves.

the rule of Nobody ... is what the political form known as bureaucracy truly is.

Under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not.

The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual’s own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed.

We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for their abundance.