"The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied — as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels — that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) epilogue.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"The fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil."
"To sum it all up, I must say that I regret nothing."
"I was only carrying out the orders of the Zionists. They asked me to gather the Jews in a specific place in the world…"
"Over the years I learned which hooks to use to catch which fish."
"Regret is something for little children."
"It was actually an achievement that was never matched before or since."
"Adolf Hitler may have been wrong all down the line, but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way…"
"My political sentiments inclined toward the left and emphasized the socialist aspects every bit as much as the nation…"
"Our opinion at the time was that National Socialism and the Communism of the Soviet Republic were sort of 'siblings’.…"
"Whether they were bank directors or mental cases, the people who were loaded on those trains meant nothing to me. It …"