Hannah Arendt is maybe only writer who managed to say something insightful or profound in almost every paragraph. It’s *almost* annoying how gifted she was.

On Zola, taking on the angry anti-Dreyfus mob.

Easier to stand up to a powerful monarch than stand alone before the misguided masses and say ‘no’ when ‘yes’ is demanded.

I’m close to live tweeting ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ at this rate.

Guys this was written in 1950. Good luck finding anything more relevant written about our current mess.

“Society is always prone to accepting a person offhand for what he pretends to be, so that a crackpot posing as a genius always has a certain chance to be believed”.

‘Instead of deserting the leader who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness’

On the problem of tribalism, and why it’s different from chauvinism.

Posted without comment

‘The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist’.

Finally finished it. What a remarkable book. What a stunningly original & prescient mind.

If, like me, you’ve gotten used to tweeting, reading blogs etc it can take 15 or 20 uninterrupted minutes of focused reading before you get into the groove - then it starts looking like the matrix.