The Life of the Mind Quotes

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

“Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

“Thinking, existentially speaking, is a solitary but not a lonely business; solitude is that human situation in which I keep myself company. Loneliness comes about when I am alone without being able to split up into the two-in-one, without being able to keep myself company.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

“From the Greek word for spectators, theatai, the later philosophical term “theory” was derived, and the word “theoretical” until a few hundred years ago meant “contemplating,” looking upon something from the outside, from a position implying a view that is hidden from those who take part in the spectacle and actualize it. The inference to be drawn from this early distinction between doing and understanding is obvious: as a spectator you may understand the “truth” of what the spectacle is about; but the price you have to pay is withdrawal from participating in it.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to ‘demand’ its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

“I ended this study of active life with a curious sentence that Cicero ascribed to Cato, who used to say that “never is a man more active than when he does nothing, never is he less alone than when he is by himself’ (Numquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset).7 Assuming Cato was right, the questions are obvious: What are we “doing” when we do nothing but think? Where are we when we, normally always surrounded by our fellow-men, are together with no one but ourselves?”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“what we usually call life is death, what we usually call death is life”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“What interested me in the Vita Activa was that the contrary notion of complete quietness in the Vita Contemplativa was so overwhelming that compared with this stillness all other differences between the various activities in the Vita Activa disappeared. Compared to this quiet, it was no longer important whether you labored and tilled the soil, or worked and produced use-objects, or acted together with others in certain enterprises. Even Marx, in whose work and thought the question of action played such a crucial role, “uses the expression ‘Praxis’ simply in the sense of ‘what man does’ as opposed to ‘what man thinks.’”6 I was, however, aware that one could look at this matter from an altogether different viewpoint, and to indicate my doubts I ended this study of active life with a curious sentence that Cicero ascribed to Cato, who used to say that “never is a man more active than when he does nothing, never is he less alone than when he is by himself’ (Numquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset).7 Assuming Cato was right, the questions are obvious: What are we “doing” when we do nothing but think? Where are we when we, normally always surrounded by our fellow-men, are together with no one but ourselves?”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“I had been concerned with the problem of Action, the oldest concern of political theory, and what had always troubled me about it was that the very term I adopted for my reflections on the matter, namely, vita activa, was coined by men who were devoted to the contemplative way of life and who looked upon all kinds of being alive from that perspective. Seen from that perspective, the active way of life is “laborious,” the contemplative way is sheer quietness; the active one goes on in public, the contemplative one in the “desert”; the active one is devoted to “the necessity of one’s neighbor,” the contemplative one to the “vision of God.” (Duae sunt vitae, activa et contemplativa. Activa est in labore, contemplativa in requie. Activa in publico, contemplativa in deserto. Activa in necessitate proximi, contemplativa in visione Dei.) I have quoted from a medieval author4 of the twelfth century, almost at random, because the notion that contemplation is the highest state of the mind is as old as Western philosophy. The thinking activity—according to Plato, the soundless dialogue we carry on with ourselves—serves only to open the eyes of the mind, and even the Aristotelian nous is an organ for seeing and beholding the truth. In other words, thinking aims at and ends in contemplation, and contemplation is not an activity but a passivity; it is the point where mental activity comes to rest.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“In contrast to the inorganic thereness of lifeless matter, living beings are not mere appearances. To be alive means to be possessed by an urge toward self-display which answers the fact of one’s own appearingness. Living things make their appearance like actors on a stage set for them. The stage is common to all who are alive, but it seems different to each species, different also to each individual specimen. Seeming—the it-seems-to-me, dokei moi—is the mode, perhaps the only possible one, in which an appearing world is acknowledged and perceived. To appear always means to seem to others, and this seeming varies according to the standpoint and the perspective of the spectators. In other words, every appearing thing acquires, by virtue of its appearingness, a kind of disguise that may indeed—but does not have to—hide or disfigure it. Seeming corresponds to the fact that every appearance, its identity notwithstanding, is perceived by a plurality of spectators. The”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“In other words, thinking aims at and ends in contemplation, and contemplation is not an activity but a passivity; it is the point where mental activity comes to rest. According to traditions of Christian time, when philosophy had become the handmaiden of theology, thinking became meditation, and meditation again ended in contemplation, a kind of blessed state of the soul where the mind was no longer stretching out to know the truth but, in anticipation of a future state, received it temporarily in intuition.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“ipsedixitism”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“For the need to think can never be stilled by allegedly definite insights of “wise men”; it can be satisfied only through thinking, and the thoughts I had yesterday will satisfy this need today only to the extent that I want and am able to think them anew.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“Nothing we see or hear or touch can be expressed in words that equal what is given to the senses. Hegel was right when he pointed out that “the This of sense . . . cannot be reached by language”8 Was it not precisely the discovery of a discrepancy between words, the medium in which we think, and the world of appearances, the medium in which we live, that led to philosophy and metaphysics in the first place?”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“Nothing could appear, the word “appearance” would make no sense, if recipients of appearances did not exist—living creatures able to acknowledge, recognize, and react to—in flight or desire, approval or disapproval, blame or praise—what is not merely there but appears to them and is meant for their perception.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“If, as I suggested before, the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to “demand” its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications, and he once observed that “stupidity is caused by a wicked heart.”21 This is not true: absence of thought is not stupidity; it can be found in highly intelligent people, and a wicked heart is not its cause; it is probably the other way round, that wickedness may be caused by absence of thought. In any event, the matter can no longer be left to “specialists” as though thinking, like higher mathematics, were the monopoly of a specialized discipline.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“This insight of Nietzsche’s, namely, that “the elimination of the suprasensory also eliminates the merely sensory and thereby the difference between them” (Heidegger),17 is actually so obvious that it defies every attempt to date it historically; all thinking in terms of two worlds implies that these two are inseparably connected with each other. Thus, all the elaborate modern arguments against positivism are anticipated by the unsurpassed simplicity of Democritus’ little dialogue between the mind, the organ for the suprasensory, and the senses.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“The question that imposed itself was: Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing or even actually “condition” them against it? (The very word “con-science,” at any rate, points in this direction insofar as it means “to know with and by myself,” a kind of knowledge that is actualized in every thinking process.)”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“To anticipate, and put it in a nutshell: The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“No one knew this better than Nietzsche, who, with his poetic and metaphoric description of the assassination of God,15 has caused so much confusion in these matters. In a significant passage in The Twilight of Idols, he clarifies what the word “God” meant in the earlier story. It was merely a symbol for the suprasensory realm as understood by metaphysics; he now uses, instead of “God,” the expression “true world” and says: “We have abolished the true world. What has remained? The apparent one perhaps? Oh no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think

“Toda virtud comienza con el cumplido que se le hace, mediante el cual se expresa la satisfacción por ella.”
― Hannah Arendt, La vida del espíritu (Básica)

“Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications, and he once observed that “stupidity is caused by a wicked heart.”21 This is not true: absence of thought is not stupidity; it can be found in highly intelligent people, and a wicked heart is not its cause; it is probably the other way round, that wickedness may be caused by absence of thought.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think