Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

According to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum President Kennedy got his facts wrong. Dante never made this statement. The closest to what President Kennedy meant is in the Inferno where the souls in the ante-room of hell, who "lived without disgrace and without praise," and the coward angels, who did not rebel but did not resist the cohorts of Lucifer, are condemned to being whirled through the air by great winds while being stung by wasps and horseflies. Dante placed those who "non furon ribelli né fur fedeli" — were neither for nor against God, in a special region near the mouth of Hell; the lowest part of Hell, a lake of ice, was for traitors. According to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in the undated article "John F. Kennedy's Favorite Quotations: Dante's Inferno" President Kennedy's quote was based upon an interpretation of Dante's Inferno. As Robert Kennedy explained in 1964, "President Kennedy's favorite quote was really from Dante, 'The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.'" This supposed quotation is not actually in Dante's work, but is based upon a similar one. In the Inferno, Dante and his guide Virgil, on their way to Hell, pass by a group of dead souls outside the entrance to Hell. These individuals, when alive, remained neutral at a time of great moral decision. Virgil explains to Dante that these souls cannot enter either Heaven or Hell because they did not choose one side or another. They are therefore worse than the greatest sinners in Hell because they are repugnant to both God and Satan alike, and have been left to mourn their fate as insignificant beings neither hailed nor cursed in life or death, endlessly travailing below Heaven but outside of Hell. This scene occurs in the third canto of the Inferno. According to Bartleby.com Kennedy's remark may have been inspired by the passage from Dante Alighieri's La Comedia Divina “Inferno,” canto 3, lines