This paragraph, at the end of Hannah Arendt's text entitled Labor, Work, Action, has strong parallels with Beuys' understanding of freedom and the view that 'every human being is an artist'. 

"Without action, without the capacity to start something new and thus articulate the new beginning that comes into the world with the birth of each human being, the life of man, spent between birth and death, would indeed be doomed beyond salvation. The life span itself, running toward death would inevitably carry everything human to ruin and destruction. Action, with all its uncertainties, is like an every-present reminder that men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin something new. Initium ut esset homo creatus est - "that there be a beginning man was created," said Augustine. With the creation of man, the principle of beginning came into the world - which, of course, is only another way of saying that with the creation of man, the principle of freedom appeared on earth."

Labor, Work, Action is the first of five sections in Hannah Arendt's The Vita Activa. This work is published in 'The Portable Hannah Arendt' edited by Peter Baehr, Penguin Putnum 2000.