Q0278

Hannah Arendt

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

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 Philosophy
Source The Life of the Mind
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with The Life of the Mind, within the tradition of Political Philosophy. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Hannah Arendt's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

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.

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 philosophy

  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 philosophy theme