“The moment we want to say who somebody is, our very vocabulary leads us astray into saying what he is; we get entangled in a description of qualities he necessarily shares with others like him; we begin to describe a type or a 'character' in the old meaning of the word, with the result that his specific uniqueness escapes us.”
More from Hannah Arendt
“Heidegger lies notoriously always and everywhere, and whenever he can.”
“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good…”
“All stories begun and enacted by men unfold their true meaning only when they have come to…”
“Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.”