The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
--Hannah Arendt
Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
--Hannah Arendt
Humans can adapt to endure almost anything, but in doing so, they sometimes perpetuate incredible evil. The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.
Hannah Arendt - The Banality of Evil
The realization that caused the breakdown of the witness at the Eichmann trial.
Mass murderers often are ordinary people with a bit of encouragement and opportunity.