Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that speech is intrinsically linked to political existence and significance.
Hannah Arendt emphasizes the essential role of speech in defining our humanity and political nature. She holds that when speech's relevance is questioned, it elevates the issue to a political one, as our ability to communicate shapes our identity as political beings and affects societal structures and relations.
In practice
In a debate about freedom of speech, one might quote Arendt to emphasize the importance of communication in politics.
A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow. While it retains its visibility, it loses its quality of rising into sight from some darker ground which must remain hidden if it is not to lose its depth in a very real, non-subjective sense.
Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies' - 'one against all' - and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.
We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands...Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship...But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse...The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friendβs presence, is concerned with the common world.
Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.
Even though we have lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to subsume the particular, a being whose essence is a beginning may have enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality.
It is the nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before. This character of startling unexpectedness is inherent in all beginnings.
Institutions mistake good intentions for objectives. They say "health care"; that's an intention, not an objective.
What is there astonishing in the death of a mortal? But we are grieved at his dying before his time. Are we sure that this was not his time? We do not know how to pick and choose what is good for our souls, or how to fix the limits of the life of man.
The majority of philosophers are totally humorless. That's part of their trouble.
I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.
I don't believe we have a professional self Monday through Friday and a real self the rest of the time. It is all professional, and it is all personal.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
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