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The Promise of Politics QUOTES

The Promise of Politics QUOTES

1 " Friendship to a large extent, indeed, consists of this kind of talking about something that the friends have in common. By talking about what is between them, it becomes ever more common to them. It gains not only its specific articulateness, but develops and expands and finally, in the course of time and life, begins to constitute a little world of its own which is shared in friendship. "

― Hannah Arendt , The Promise of Politics

2 " This kind of understanding—seeing the world (as we rather tritely say today) from the other fellow's point of view—is the political kind of insight par excellence. If we wanted to define, traditionally, the one outstanding virtue of the statesman, we could say that it consists in understanding the greatest possible number and variety of realities—not of subjective viewpoints, which of course also exist but which do not concern us here—as those realities open themselves up to the various opinions of citizens; and, at the same time, in being able to communicate between the citizens and their opinions so that the commonness of this world becomes apparent. "

― Hannah Arendt , The Promise of Politics

3 " Modern psychology is desert psychology: when we lose the faculty to judge — to suffer and condemn — we begin to think that there is something wrong with us if we cannot live under the conditions of desert life. Insofar as psychology tries to 'help' us, it helps us to 'adjust' to those conditions, taking away our only hope, namely that we, who are not of the desert though which we live in it, are able to transform it into a human world. Psychology turns everything topsy-turvy: precisely because we suffer under desert conditions we are still human and still intact; the danger lies in becoming true inhabitants of the desert and feeling at home in it. "

― Hannah Arendt , The Promise of Politics