David Goldman

“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

“Men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

“No human life, not even the life of the hermit in nature’s wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

“Only the existence of a public realm and the world’s subsequent transformation into a community of things which gathers men together and relates them to each other depends entirely on permanence. If the world is to contain a public space, it cannot be erected for one generation and planned for the living only; it must transcend the life-span of mortal men.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition