The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
Philosophers
Hannah Arendt
Born in 1906, Hannah Arendt fled Nazi Germany for the U.S. The Origins of Totalitarianism dissected modern domination; the Eichmann trial yielded "the banality of evil." Her warning sharpens as democracies weaken.
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Hannah Arendt's Other Quotes
The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition.
The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
No one has the right to obey.
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
Related Quotes
It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
-- Socrates
No one desires evil.
-- Socrates
Ethics is the ground of being of human community — the way of aidagara (betweenness) between person and person.
-- Tetsuro Watsuji
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
-- Confucius
Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.
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Care for one another impartially; benefit one another in mutual exchange.
-- Mozi