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Words of Wisdom

Hannah Arendt on Good and Evil

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

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was a German-American political theorist who specialized in the nature of power and its practice within political systems. Born into a Jewish family, Arendt fled Germany in 1933 and then escaped Vichy France in 1941. After settling in the United States, she became the first female lecturer at Princeton and enjoyed a respected and well-traveled academic career until her death at age 69.


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

-Hannah Arendt, from The Life of the Mind (1978), “Thinking” (h/t Wikiquote)

Image credit: Wikicommons


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