“The space of appearance comes into being wherever men are together in the manner of speech and action, and therefore pre­dates and precedes all formal constitution of the puhlic realm and the various forms of government, that is, the various forms in which the puhlic realm can be organized. Its peculiarity is that, unlike the spaces which are the work of our hands, it does not sur­vive the actuality of the movement which brought it into being, but disappears not only with the dispersal of men-as in the case of great catastrophes when the body politic of a people is de­stroyed-but with the disappearance or arrest of the activities themselves. Wherever people gather together, it is potentially there, but only potentially, not necessarily and not forever. That civilizations can rise and fall, that mighty empires and great cul­tures can <ledine and pass away without external catastrophes­and more often than not such external “causes” are preceded by a less visihle interna! decay that invites disaster-is due to this peculiarity of the puhlic realm, which, hecause it ultimately re­sides on action and speech, never altogether loses its potential character. What first undermines and then kills political com­munities is loss of power and final impotence; and power cannot he stored up and kept in reserve for emergencies, like the instru­ments of violence, hut exists only in its actualization. Where power is not actualized, it passes away, and history is full of ex­amples that the greatest material riches cannot compensate for this loss. Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not hrutal, where words are not used to veil intentions hut to disclose reali­ties, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy hut to establish relations and create new realities.
Power is what keeps the puhlic realm, the potential space of appearance between acting and speaking men, in existence. The word itself, its Greelc equivalent dynamis, like the Latin potentia with its various modem dervatives or the German Macht (which derives from mogen and moglich, not from machen), indicates its “potential” character. Power is always, as we would say, a power potential and not an unchangeahle, measurahle, and reliable entity like force or strength. While strength is the natural quality of an individual seen in isolation, power springs up hetween men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse. Because of this peculiarity, which power shares with all potentialities that can only be actualized hut never fully materialized, power is to an astonishing degree independent of material factors, either of numhers or means. A comparatively small hut well-organized group of men can rule almost indefinitely over large and populous empires, and it is not infrequent in history that small and poor coumries get the better of great and rich nations. (The story of David and Goliath is only metaphorically true; the power of a few can be greater than the power of many, hut in a contest he­tween two men not power but strength decides, and cleverness, that is, brain power, contrihutes materially to the outcome on the same level as muscular force.) Popular revolt against materially strong rulers, on the other hand, may engender an almost irresist­ihle power even if it foregoes the use of violence in the face of materially vastly superior forces. To call this “passive resistance” is certainly an ironic idea; it is one of the most active and efficient ways of action ever devised, because it cannot be countered by fighting, where there may be defeat or victory, but only by mass slaughter in which even the victor is defeated, cheated of his prize, since nobody can rule over dead men.” (Hannah Arendt)