Q0095

“Men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.” — Hannah Arendt (The Human Condition)

Verified English quotation. Primary source: The Human Condition. Theme: nature.

English

Men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.
Thinker Hannah Arendt
School Political Phenomenology
Source The Human Condition
Theme Nature
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source and attribution

The archive attributes this English wording to The Human Condition and files it under Political Phenomenology. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

About Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was a German-Jewish political theorist who fled Nazism and wrote in the United States in English and German. A student of Heidegger and Jaspers, she refused the label “philosopher” yet produced lasting works on totalitarianism, revolution, and the vita activa.

How to read this passage

Nature may mean physical cosmos, living world, human nature, or a normative standard of what ought to be. Presocratics, Daoists, Stoics, and modern environmental thinkers share the word while disagreeing about its force. This passage enters that discussion through nature, action.

Concepts in this quote

Nature
Philosophy quotes about nature ask what the cosmos is, how humans belong in it, and whether “natural” can guide ethics or politics.
Action
Action concerns agency: what it is to do something intentionally, and how thought becomes practice.

How to cite this quotation

APA: Hannah Arendt. (n.d.). Men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0095

MLA: Hannah Arendt. “Men, not Man, live on the earth and….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0095.

Chicago: Hannah Arendt. “Men, not Man, live on the earth and….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0095.

Frequently asked questions

What is the source of the quotation “Men, not Man, live on the earth and…”?

The passage is attributed to Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. The archive attributes this English wording to The Human Condition and files it under Political Phenomenology. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

What does Hannah Arendt mean by nature?

Nature may mean physical cosmos, living world, human nature, or a normative standard of what ought to be. Presocratics, Daoists, Stoics, and modern environmental thinkers share the word while disagreeing about its force. This passage enters that discussion through nature, action.

Same thinker

More from Hannah Arendt

  1. Thinking is the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention.
  2. Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination.
  3. The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
  4. Forgiveness is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly.
  5. the banality of evil

All quotations by Hannah Arendt

Same theme

More on nature

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the nature theme