Each time you write something and you send it out into the world and it becomes public, obviously everybody is free to do with it what he pleases, and this is as it should be. I do not have any quarrel with this. You should not try to hold your hand now on whatever may happen to what you have been thinking for yourself. You should rather try to learn from what other people do with it.
Hannah Arendt, remarks to the American Society of Christian Ethics, 1973, Library of Congress MSS Box 70, p. 011828, quoted by Margaret Canovan in her introduction to The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed.
I have just begun reading Arendt’s treatise on work and our struggle to supersede human nature. I should warn you now: I’m only a few pages in, and ready to send quotes out like mad. Which is only appropriate, in light of Arendt’s comment here. She would have been a fan of Tumblr.
(via tragos)
Please send away, Tragos. In the meantime, I shall have this quote tattooed onto my brain.
(Also, I’m going to get this thing Bingo mentioned; it might be useful when I fail to remember Arendt’s words - but that’s another story.)
