Hannah Arendt
German-born American political theorist (1906 to 1975); author of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958) and Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), her report on the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
From the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil11 korrents
Hannah Arendt did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsJustice does not permit anything of the sort; it demands seclusion, it permits sorrow rather than anger, and it prescribes the most careful abstention from all the nice pleasures of putting oneself in the limelight.
↗Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006 edition)books.google.com All 11 from this book
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Our reading
Under the Nazi regime, evil lost the quality by which most people recognize it: temptation
Their wordsEvil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it - the quality of temptation.
↗Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006 edition)books.google.com All 11 from this book
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Their wordsYet every custom has its origin in some single act.
↗Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006 edition)books.google.com All 11 from this book
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Their wordsThe story of the Danish Jews is sui generis, and the behavior of the Danish people and their government was unique among all the countries of Europe - whether occupied, or a partner of the Axis, or neutral and truly independent.
↗Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006 edition)books.google.com All 11 from this book
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Their wordsThe question of a court's jurisdiction must be decided before the trial begins; and once a court has been declared competent, it must also pass judgment.
↗Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006 edition)books.google.com All 11 from this book
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Their wordsOn the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.
↗Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006 edition)books.google.com All 11 from this book
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Our reading
Any act that has once appeared in human history remains a potentiality long after it has passed
Their wordsIt is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.
↗Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006 edition)books.google.com All 11 from this book
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Their wordsThis, of course, is not to deny that there is such a thing as political responsibility which, however, exists quite apart from what the individual member of the group has done and therefore can neither be judged in moral terms nor be brought before a criminal court.
↗Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006 edition)books.google.com All 11 from this book
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Their wordsEvery government assumes political responsibility for the deeds and misdeeds of its predecessor and every nation for the deeds and misdeeds of the past.
↗Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006 edition)books.google.com All 11 from this book
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Our reading
So many were like the accused: neither perverted nor sadistic, but terribly and terrifyingly normal
Their wordsThe 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.
↗Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006 edition)books.google.com All 11 from this book
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Their wordsFrom the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied - as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels - that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong.
↗Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006 edition)books.google.com All 11 from this book
The line under a date fills as the words age, a quarter at a time: past a month, six months, a year, and three years. Empty means said within the last month; full, more than three years ago. It says when, not whether it still holds — a change of mind is marked on the claim itself.
Dashed means we only know the words existed by that date; they may be older.