Hannah Aren't: The Origins of Totalitarianism
Preface to the First Edition

...value, and has become unrecognizable for human comprehension, unusable for human purpose. To yield to the mere process of disintegration has become an irresistible temptation, not only because it has assumed the spurious grandeur of "historical necessity," but also because everything outside it has begun to appear lifeless, bloodless, meaningless, and unreal.

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Hannah Aren't: The Origins of Totalitarianism
Preface to the First Edition

...of both reckless optimism and reckless despair. It holds that Progress and Doom are two sides of the same medal; that both are articles of superstition, not of faith. It was written out of conviction that it should be possible to discover the hidden mechanics by which all traditional elements of our political and spiritual world were dissolved into a conglomeration where everything seems to have lost specific... 6/

Hannah Aren't: The Origins of Totalitarianism
Preface to the First Edition

...of the century, or an adequate response to its horrors. Desperate hope and desperate fear often see closer to the center of such events than balanced judgment and measured insight. The central events of our time are not less effectively forgotten by those committed to a belief in an unavoidable doom, than by those who have given themselves up to reckless optimism.

This book has been written against a background... 5/

Hannah Aren't: The Origins of Totalitarianism
Preface to the First Edition

...masses for it) and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives.

On the level of historical insight and political thought there prevails an ill-defined, general agreement that the essential structure of all civilizations is at the breaking point. Although it may seem better preserved in some parts of the world than others, it can nowhere provide the guidance to the possibilities ... 4/

Hannah Aren't: The Origins of Totalitarianism
Preface to the First Edition

Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest — forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries. It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence (who think that everything is possible if one know how to organize... 3/

Hannah Aren't: The Origins of Totalitarianism
Preface to the First Edition

...order with all its traditions, or for the reintegration of the masses of five continents who have been thrown into a chaos produced by the violence of wars and revolutions and the growing decay of all that has been spared. Under the most diverse conditions and disparate circumstances, we watch the development of the same phenomena — homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth.

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