Hannah Arendt (film) Quotes

“Hannah Arendt”

“Adolf Eichmann”

“Eichmann in Jerusalem”

“You say you want me to teach you how to think. Thinking … is a lonely business.”

“Wikipedia: Hannah Arendt (film)”

“Internet Movie Database (IMDb): Hannah Arendt”

“I wrote no defense of Eichmann, but I did try to reconcile the shocking mediocrity of the man with his staggering deeds. Trying to understand him is not the same thing as forgiveness. And furthermore, I see it as my responsibility to understand. It is the responsibility of anyone who dares to put pen to paper on this subject.”

“Since Socrates and Plato, we usually call thinking to be engaged in that silent dialogue between me and myself. In refusing to be a person, Eichmann utterly surrendered that single most defining human quality: that of being able to think. Consequently, he was no longer capable of making moral judgments. This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which one had never seen before. It is true I have considered these questions in a philosophical way. The manifestation of the "wind of thought" is not knowledge, but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down.”

“Western tradition mistakenly assumes that the greatest evils of mankind arise from selfishness. But in our century, evil has proven to be more radical than was previously thought. And we now know that the truest evil, the radical evil, has nothing to do with selfishness or any such understandable, sinful motives. Instead, it is based on the following phenomenon: making human beings superfluous as human beings. The entire concentration camp system was designed to convince the prisoners they were unnecessary before they were murdered. In the concentration camps men were taught that punishment was not connected to a crime, that exploitation wouldn't profit anyone, and that work produced no results. The camp is a place where every activity and human impulse is senseless. Where, in other words, senselessness is daily produced anew. So, to summarize: if it is true that in the final stage of totalitarianism, an absolute evil emerges, absolute as it no longer relates to human motives, then it is equally true that without it, without totalitarianism, we would never have known the truly radical nature of evil.”