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The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don’t you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good? The good is no longer even being measured.

— Hannah Arendt Interview with French writer Roger Errera in New York Review of Books (1974)

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Progress

More quotes by Hannah Arendt

In its flight from death, the craving for permanence clings to the very things sure to be lost in death.

Love and Saint Augustine (1929)

The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.

The Life of the Mind (1978)

Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.

Men in Dark Times (1968)

Persecution of powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring from human meanness alone.

The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.

The Human Condition (1958)

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Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos.

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The History of Electricity is a field full of pleasing objects, according to all the genuine and universal principles of taste, deduced from a knowledge of human nature.

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Just remember, you can do anything you set your mind to, but it takes action, perseverance, and facing your fears.

Gillian Anderson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Hannah Arendt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.