Banality Of Evil Quotes & Sayings

Workers of lungless labs- when dying
Will you be proud you were midwife
To implements exemplifying
Assaults against the heart of life?
You knew their purpose, yet you made them.
If you had scruples, you betrayed them.
What pastoral response acquits
Those who made ovens for Auschwitz?
Indeed it is said that the banality
Of evil is its greatest shock.
It jokes. It punches its time clock,
Plays with its kids. The triviality
Of slaughtering millions can't impinge
Upon its peace, or make it cringe. — Vikram Seth

It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never "radical," that it is only extreme, and that it possess neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like fungus on the surface. It is "thought-defying," as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its "banality." Only the good has depth and can be radical. — Hannah Arendt

Have you ever read any Hannah Arendt?" I must look lost, because he explains further. "She's a political theorist."
" Anyway, she wrote this book about the trial of a Nazi lieutenant named Adolf Eichmann in the 1960s. Arendt was a Jew who left Germany during Hitler's reign, and during the trial this guy had to face up to all the atrocities he committed. Things only a monster could conceive of. However, he was examined by psychologists, and it was determined that he wasn't a psychopath, that in fact he was entirely normal. This left Arendt to determine that perfectly ordinary, everyday people were capable of crimes normally associated with only the most depraved, wicked members of society. She called it the banality of evil. — L. H. Cosway

When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government. Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good. — Thomas Paine

Cannot Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' be subject to transposition: the evil of banality? — Studs Terkel

Let us put aside resolutely that great fright, tenderly and without malice, daring to be wrong in something important rather than right in some meticulous banality, fearing no evil while the mind is free to search, imagine, and conclude, inviting our countrymen to try other instruments than coercion and suppression in the effort to meet destiny with triumph, genially suspecting that no creed yet calendared in the annals of politics mirrors the doomful possibilities of infinity. — Charles A. Beard

Much worse is the evil of banality. — Vanessa Place

Love takes so much more than a few nights in bed and a few hours of conversation. In the past six months, I have also learned that it means many things to people. For the longest time, I thought that love meant staying and persevering. Today, I know that love is living, giving, believing and letting go. Sometimes it even takes twelve years for you to question whether or not you ever really had it. — Christine Brae

She always imagined that evil played out on a large canvas- wars, concentration camps, gas chambers, the partitioning of nations. Now she realized that evil had a domestic side, and its very banality protected it from exposure. — Thrity Umrigar

Apologies only account for that which they do not alter. — Benjamin Disraeli

Without women to nurture in this world, how do - how do men get by? How do children get by? How does society get by at all? — Raquel Welch

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. — Ursula K. Le Guin

But shouldn't there be a least? Shouldn't there be a bare minimum that life should give you? Is it too much to ask for a job you don't hate, or for someone to truly have and hold? Is it too much to ask for one child? Even one some would call flawed? Couldn't I at least have that? — Kiera Cass

To be able to live peaceably with hard and perverse persons, or with the disorderly, or with such as go contrary to us, is a great grace. — Thomas A Kempis

At the Nuremberg trials, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt described the actions and the architects of the Holocaust with a simple, memorable phase--saying that the whole lot represented 'the banality of evil.' Her long ago words applied well to the man before us. — Michael Morton

Films are artifice. We're telling stories on film. At the same time, when it works, there is a real tough immediacy and spontaneity to it, and a punch. — Paul McGann

What better way to start filling the vessel than exercise," Provet suggests. "I strongly believe that exercise can serve as an antidote and as a type of inoculation against addiction," he says. "As an antidote, you're giving the individual an avenue of life experience that most have not had - the goals of exercise, the feeling of exercise, the challenge of exercise, the pleasure and the pain, the accomplishment, the physical well-being, the self-esteem. All that exercise gives us, you're now presenting to the addict as a very compelling option. — John J. Ratey

In contrast to the "banality of evil," which posits that ordinary people can be responsible for the most despicable acts of cruelty and degradation of their fellows, I posit the "banality of heroism," which unfurls the banner of the heroic Everyman and Everywoman who heed the call to service to humanity when their time comes to act. When that bell rings, they will know that it rings for them. It sounds a call to uphold what is best in human nature that rises above the powerful pressures of Situation and System as the profound assertion of human dignity opposing evil. — Philip Zimbardo

From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex. The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening. The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm. This world exists simply to satisfy the needs - including, importantly, the sentimental needs - of white people and Oprah. — Teju Cole

Good can be radical; evil can never be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension yet--and this is its horror!--it can spread like a fungus over the surface of the earth and lay waste the entire world. Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it find nothing there. That is the banality of evil. — Amos Elon

Yoga has stopped me from destroying my joints after running. It slows me down. My brain and body can go into overdrive - yoga teaches me to focus on the moment and not get ahead of myself. — Julia Stiles

It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lessons that this long course in human wickedness had taught us - the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil. — Hannah Arendt

As we have come to understand the psychology of evil, we have realized that such transformations of human character are not as rare as we would like to believe. Historical inquiry and behavioral science have demonstrated the "banality of evil"
that is, under certain conditions and social pressures, ordinary people can commit acts that would otherwise be unthinkable. — Philip Zimbardo

Most great filmmakers are good at place. Like how people say, like, "The city itself is a character in the movie," you know? I'm so interior. I always forget there's such a thing as an exterior wide shot, where you can see where someone is. As opposed to just: how can we show what this person is thinking, in an abstract way that is felt? — Miranda July

The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm. — Teju Cole

...she took a breath that didn't feel like she was going to die. — Catherine Coulter

Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception. — Ervin Staub

'Thou shalt not kill' does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings and this commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai. — Leo Tolstoy

Dawn was written well before 9/11. People speak a lot today about the banality of evil, but not all evil is banal. Some of it is carefully structured and well-thought-out. That's where the real danger lies. — Alan Dean Foster

If there's evil in recklessness, there's also evil in banality. — Robert Draper

At Dachau. We had a wonderful pool for the garrison children. It was even heated. But that was before we were transferred. Dachau was ever so much nicer than Auschwitz. But then, it was in the Reich. See my trophies there. The one in the middle, the big one. That was presented to me by the Reich Youth Leader himself, Baldur von Schirach. Let me show you my scrapbook. — William Styron