Comment: Arendt's insight highlights how pervasive dishonesty erodes the very foundations of critical thinking and collective decision-making. In the context of Conversational Leadership, it underscores the importance of fostering authentic, trust-based dialogue to sustain a community's ability to reflect, judge, and act with integrity.If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. …
And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind.
It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge.
And with such a people you can then do what you please.
Credit: Hannah Arendt
Source: Comments made in 1974 during an interview with the French writer Roger Errera and published in October 26, 1978 issue of The NewYork Review of Books Interview.
Posts where this quotation is embedded
- Pollution of the Global Information Ecosystem The contamination of information with false and misleading material
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