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What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique ("a great task that occurs once in two thousand years"), which must therefore be difficult to bear.

— Hannah Arendt Eichmann in Jerusalem : A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963)

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More quotes by Hannah Arendt

In its flight from death, the craving for permanence clings to the very things sure to be lost in death.

Love and Saint Augustine (1929)

The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.

The Life of the Mind (1978)

Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.

Men in Dark Times (1968)

Persecution of powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring from human meanness alone.

The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.

The Human Condition (1958)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Hannah Arendt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.