"[T]he combined danger of totalitarianism and mass society is not that the former abolishes political freedom and civil rights, and that the latter threatens to engulf all culture, the whole world of durable things, and to abolish the standards of excellence without which no thing can ever be produced - although these dangers are real enough. Beyond them we sense another even more dangerous threat, namely that both totalitarianism and mass society, the one by means of terror and ideology, the other by yielding without violence or doctrine to the general trend toward the socialization of man, are driven to stifle initiative and spontaneity as such, that is, the element of action and freedom present in all activities which are not mere laboring [...] Human freedom is not merely a matter of metaphysics but a matter of fact, no less a reality, indeed, than the automatic processes within and against which action always has to assert itself. For the processes set into motion by action also tend to become automatic - which is why no single act and no single event can ever once and for all deliver and save a man, or a nation, or mankind."
- Arendt, Freedom and Politics
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