Anne Frank wrote this in her diary on Saturday, 15 July 1944, while hiding from the Nazis in the Amsterdam “Secret Annex.” This exact English wording is the 1952 Barbara Mooyaart-Doubleday translation; the later 1995 Susan Massotty “definitive edition” renders the same line “truly good at heart.”
“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart” Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (entry of 15 July 1944; trans. B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, 1952)
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In context
Evoking the world of Anne Frank — German-born Dutch Jewish diarist. Theme: "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
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Provenance
The source
Work
Het Achterhuis (The Diary of a Young Girl)
Entry
Diary entry, Saturday, 15 July 1944
Translation
B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, first English edition, 1952
First published
Dutch 1947 · English 1952
It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
diary · 15 July 1944
The 1952 Mooyaart-Doubleday translation of the 15 July 1944 entry. Anne then continues: “I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.”
Wikiquote lists the line in its sourced material, dating it to the diary entry of 15 July 1944 and noting both the “really” and “truly good at heart” renderings.
The Anne Frank House documents that the first English edition, The Diary of a Young Girl, was translated by B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday and published in 1952 — the source of the famous English wording.
The original Dutch Het Achterhuis was published in 1947; the 1995 “definitive edition” by Susan Massotty renders the same sentence “truly good at heart.”
The diary was first published in 1947 (Dutch) and 1952 (this English translation) — both well after 1930, so the work is in copyright in the United States. The underlying text is controlled by the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel, and this specific English wording is the copyrighted 1952 Mooyaart-Doubleday translation.
Fact-check
The catch: it’s real, but rarely quoted whole
The words are authentically Anne Frank’s. What gets distorted is the context and the exact wording — the line is almost always lifted away from the bleak sentences around it and the play/film that made it a slogan.
✕
wordingTranslation variance really vs. truly
The popular English form — “really good at heart” — is the 1952 Mooyaart-Doubleday translation. The 1995 Massotty “definitive edition” renders the same Dutch as “truly good at heart,” so both circulate as if interchangeable.
✕
contextThe 1955 play & 1959 film made into a slogan
Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s Pulitzer-winning 1955 stage adaptation and its 1959 film both ended on this line, cementing it as an uplifting “message” — a framing later attacked as sentimentalizing a diary that ends in deportation and death, by Bruno Bettelheim in “The Ignored Lesson of Anne Frank” (Harper’s, November 1960) and Cynthia Ozick in “Who Owns Anne Frank?” (The New Yorker, 6 October 1997).
✓Anne Frank genuinely wrote it on 15 July 1944 — immediately adding, “I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death,” a line the slogan version usually drops.
Context
Why it mattered
Anne Frank wrote this passage on 15 July 1944 — just weeks before the annex was raided on 4 August 1944 and its occupants deported. Read in full, the entry is not a simple affirmation of human goodness but a young woman arguing with her own despair: she calls her ideals “absurd and impossible to carry out,” yet refuses to abandon them.
Because her father Otto was the only member of the household to survive, the diary reached the world as her voice alone. The single sentence about people being “good at heart” became its emblem — which is precisely why scholars caution that quoting it without the surrounding darkness turns a wartime act of defiance into a greeting-card sentiment.
“Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
The fuller passage
In the 1952 translation the surrounding lines read: “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.”
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank (1929–1945) was a German-born Jewish girl who kept a diary while hiding with her family in a concealed annex in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Betrayed in August 1944, she was deported and died at Bergen-Belsen in early 1945, aged 15. Her father Otto, the family’s sole survivor, published her diary as Het Achterhuis in 1947; it has since become one of the most widely read books in the world.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source — Chicago
Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Translated by B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday. New York: Doubleday, 1952. Entry of Saturday, 15 July 1944. Originally published as Het Achterhuis (Amsterdam: Contact, 1947).
MLA (9th ed.)
Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Translated by B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, Doubleday, 1952.
APA (7th ed.)
Frank, A. (1952). The diary of a young girl (B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, Trans.). Doubleday. (Original work published 1947)
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/in-spite-of-everything-i-still-believe-that-people-are