There exists in our society widespread fear of judgingโฆ[B]ehind the unwillingness to judge lurks the suspicion that no one is a free agent, and hence doubt that anyone is responsible or could be expected to answer for what he has doneโฆWho has ever maintained that by judging a wrong I presuppose that I myself would be incapable of committing it?
Hannah ArendtIdeologies - isms which to the satisfaction of their adherents can explain everything and every occurence by deducing it from a single premise - are a very recent phenomenon ... Not before Hitler and Stalin were the great political potentialities of the ideologies discovered.
Hannah ArendtWherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.
Hannah Arendtthe greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.
Hannah Arendt