Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

by Hannah Arendt

Good can be radical; evil can never be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension

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 finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.

She did recognize that beleaguered people have a tendency to hope against hope that somehow things will turn out better if they can only buy time.

For this case was built on what the Jews had suffered, not on what Eichmann had done.

There exist many things considerably worse than death, and the S.S. saw to it that none of them was ever very far from their victims’ minds and imagination.