The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality
Not John F. Kennedy — a misquotation of Dante he popularizedDante Alighieri (falsely credited); popularized by John F. KennedyKennedy: 1917–1963 · 35th U.S. President. Dante: c. 1265–1321 · the line is not his.
John F. Kennedy quoted this line repeatedly—“Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality”—always crediting Dante, and he did more than anyone to popularize it. But it appears in no English translation of the Divine Comedy: Dante’s neutral souls sit in Hell’s vestibule chasing a blank banner, and his lowest circle is frozen ice, not fire. The earliest strongly matching wording is a 1944 aphorism (also credited to Dante) in Henry Powell Spring’s What Is Truth. The idea is a distortion of Dante; the sentence is not his, and it did not originate with Kennedy.
“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality” Misattributed to Dante Alighieri (and to John F. Kennedy, who popularized it). Not found in Dante's Divine Comedy; earliest documented in Henry Powell Spring, What Is Truth (1944).
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to John F. Kennedy. Use the credit shown above instead.
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? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
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In context
Evoking the world of John F. Kennedy — 35th President of the United States. Theme: "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality". 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.
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Provenance
The trail of a ‘pseudo-Dante’ line
Falsely credited to
Dante Alighieri — and often to Kennedy himself
Earliest documented wording
Henry Powell Spring, What Is Truth (1944)
Popularized by
Sen./Pres. John F. Kennedy, from the mid-1950s, crediting Dante
Reality
In no English translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy
The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
Misquotation
Dante’s actual text (Inferno, Canto III) places the neutrals—those who lived “without disgrace and without praise”—in the vestibule outside Hell’s gate, stung by wasps as they chase a blank banner. They are not in Hell at all, let alone its “hottest” place; and Dante’s deepest circle is a frozen lake of ice, not fire. The popular sentence is a modern distortion, not a translation.
1944: the earliest strongly matching wording appears—credited to Dante—in Henry Powell Spring’s aphorism collection What Is Truth, per Quote Investigator.
1956 onward: Senator (later President) John F. Kennedy uses the line in speeches, always crediting Dante, cementing it in public memory (QI).
Verdict: Wikiquote files it under Misattributed, and CheckYourFact confirms it is not in the Inferno — and the JFK Library itself notes the “supposed quotation is not actually in Dante’s work.”
The exact wording is a modern “pseudo-Dante” aphorism, not a passage from any dated edition or translation of Dante, so it cannot be treated as public domain on Dante’s account. Its earliest documented appearance is Henry Powell Spring’s What Is Truth (1944)—a post-1930 work—but Spring presented it as a Dante quotation rather than his own, and Quote Investigator treats it as the product of a multistep folk evolution with no clearly identifiable coiner. With the true origin unsettled, no clean copyright status can be asserted.
Fact-check
A misquote with two false fathers
This may be the most-repeated line falsely credited to Dante—and Kennedy, who loved it, is the reason it spread. It is a distortion of Dante, coined by no one anyone can name.
✕
The exact wordingDante Alighieri Not in his work
The sentence is in no English translation of the Divine Comedy. Dante’s neutrals sit in Hell’s vestibule chasing a blank banner (Inferno III), and his lowest circle is frozen ice—not a “hottest place.”
✕
As a Kennedy originalJohn F. Kennedy Popularizer only
Also seen credited toMartin Luther King Jr. Also false
The line was later attached to other moral orators such as Dr. King, but the earliest documented wording is a 1944 aphorism in Henry Powell Spring’s What Is Truth, per Wikiquote. Theodore Roosevelt voiced a differently worded precursor in 1915—“Dante reserved a special place of infamy in the inferno for those base angels who dared side neither with evil nor with good”—an antecedent of the idea, not this sentence.
✓It is a modern “pseudo-Dante” distortion—first documented in 1944 and made famous by Kennedy—that appears in none of Dante’s actual writing.
Context
Why the line took hold
The sentence works because it feels like Dante: it borrows his moral architecture—a Hell that sorts sinners by gravity—and weaponizes it against political indifference. Kennedy grasped its rhetorical force and used it to indict neutrality on civil rights and the Cold War, which is why it now reads as his.
But the real Inferno makes the opposite point: Dante despised the neutrals so thoroughly that he refused them even the dignity of damnation, leaving them to churn in the antechamber outside Hell’s gate. The popular quote “promotes” them to Hell’s hottest core—a punchier idea Dante never wrote.
Dante’s neutrals aren’t in the hottest place in Hell. They’re not in Hell at all.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States, celebrated for the rhetoric of his Cold War-era speeches. A lover of pointed quotations, he repeatedly deployed this “Dante” line to shame moral fence-sitters—at a 1956 National Conference of Christians and Jews event and on later occasions—always attributing it to the poet. He did not claim to have written it; he was its most powerful amplifier, which is why the misquotation is so often pinned to him.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented source
Henry Powell Spring, What Is Truth (1944), as the earliest strongly matching wording; not present in any translation of Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy. Traced in Garson O’Toole (Quote Investigator), “The Hottest Places in Hell Are Reserved for Those Who in a Period of Moral Crisis Maintain Their Neutrality,” 14 January 2015.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-hottest-places-in-hell-are-reserved-for-those-who-in-a