The true conservative is the man who has a real concern for injustices and takes thought against the day of reckoning.

—Hannah Arendt

About Hannah Arendt

Portrait of Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt (born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German and American philosopher, political theorist, and public historian. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century.

More quotations from Hannah Arendt

The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition.

—Hannah Arendt

humanity earth human condition

The insight that peace is the end of war, and that therefore a war is the preparation for peace, is at least as old as Aristotle, and the pretense that the aim of an armament race is to guard the peace is even older—namely, as old as the discovery of propaganda lies.

—Hannah Arendt

war peace lies propaganda

In the era of imperialism, businessmen became politicians and were acclaimed as statesmen, while statesmen were taken seriously only if they talked the language of successful businessmen.

—Hannah Arendt

politics language business imperialism

There is all the difference in the world between the criminal’s avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient’s taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.

—Hannah Arendt

activism prejudice law civil disobedience crime

The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.

—Hannah Arendt

war politics warfare resolution

More quotations tagged with “conservatives”

I never dared to be radical when young
For fear it would make me conservative when old.

—Woodrow Wilson

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.

—Robert Anton Wilson

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

The conservative in financial circles I have often described as a man who thinks nothing new ought ever to be adopted for the first time.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt

History

11 Jul 2015 Added