Hannah Arendt

1906–1975 · German-born American political theorist

Hannah Arendt was a German-born American political theorist whose work on totalitarianism, power, and moral judgment shaped 20th-century political thought. Reporting on Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial, she coined the phrase the banality of evil to describe how ordinary, unthinking people enable atrocity. This quote comes from The Life of the Mind, the ambitious study of thinking, willing and judging she left unfinished at her death in 1975.

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“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil”

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