Q0278

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who…” — Hannah Arendt (The Life of the Mind)

Verified English quotation. Primary source: The Life of the Mind. Theme: choice.

English

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
Thinker Hannah Arendt
School Political Phenomenology
Source The Life of the Mind
Theme Choice
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source and attribution

The archive attributes this English wording to The Life of the Mind and files it under Political Phenomenology. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

About Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was a German-Jewish political theorist who fled Nazism and wrote in the United States in English and German. A student of Heidegger and Jaspers, she refused the label “philosopher” yet produced lasting works on totalitarianism, revolution, and the vita activa.

How to read this passage

Free will, decision theory, and existential choice all ask how choosing is possible and what makes a choice one’s own. This passage enters that discussion through choice.

Concepts in this quote

Choice
Choice is the hinge of agency: selecting among options under reasons, constraints, and uncertainty.

How to cite this quotation

APA: Hannah Arendt. (n.d.). The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0278

MLA: Hannah Arendt. “The sad truth is that most evil is….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0278.

Chicago: Hannah Arendt. “The sad truth is that most evil is….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0278.

Frequently asked questions

What is the source of the quotation “The sad truth is that most evil is…”?

The passage is attributed to Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind. The archive attributes this English wording to The Life of the Mind and files it under Political Phenomenology. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

What does Hannah Arendt mean by choice?

Free will, decision theory, and existential choice all ask how choosing is possible and what makes a choice one’s own. This passage enters that discussion through choice.

Same thinker

More from Hannah Arendt

  1. Men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.
  2. Thinking is the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention.
  3. Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination.
  4. Forgiveness is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly.
  5. the banality of evil

All quotations by Hannah Arendt

Same theme

More on choice

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the choice theme