WIST Quotations

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

Dave — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:40:50 +0000

The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanise them.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Postscript (1963)
(Source)

Hugo, Victor -- Les Misérables, Part 1 “Fantine,” Book 2 “The Fall,” ch. 7 (1.2.7) (1862) [tr. Denny (1976)]

Dave — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 22:54:45 +0000

It is characteristic of this form of punishment, inspired by all that is pitiless, that is to say brutalizing, that gradually, by a process of mindless erosion, it turns a man into an animal, sometimes a ferocious one.

[Le propre des peines de cette nature, dans lesquelles domine ce qui est impitoyable, c’est-à-dire ce qui est abrutissant, c’est de transformer peu à peu, par une sorte de transfiguration stupide, un homme en une bête fauve, quelquefois en une bête féroce.]

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French writer, journalist, human rights activist, politician
Les Misérables, Part 1 “Fantine,” Book 2 “The Fall,” ch. 7 (1.2.7) (1862) [tr. Denny (1976)]
(Source)

On the degradation of Jean Valjean while serving his hard labor sentence.

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

The peculiarity of punishment of this kind, in which what is pitiless, that is to say, what is brutalising, predominates, is to transform little by little, by a slow stupefaction, a man into an animal, sometimes into a wild beast.
[tr. Wilbour (1862)]

The peculiarity of punishments of this nature, in which naught but what is pitiless, that is to say, brutalizing, prevails, is gradually, and by a species of stupid transfiguration, to transform a man into a wild beast, at times a ferocious beast.
[tr. Wraxall (1862)]

The peculiarity of pains of this nature, in which that which is pitiless -- that is to say, that which is brutalizing -- predominates, is to transform a man, little by little, by a sort of stupid transfiguration, into a wild beast; sometimes into a ferocious beast.
[tr. Hapgood (1887)]

The peculiarity of punishment of this kind, in which the pitiless or brutalizing part predominates, is to transform gradually by a slow numbing process a man into an animal, sometimes into a wild beast.
[tr. Wilbour/Fahnestock/MacAfee (1987)]

It is in the nature of such punishment -- in which what prevails is the pitiless, in other words, the brutalizing -- to transform a man little by little, by a kind of stupid transfiguration, into a wild beast, sometimes a ferocious beast.
[tr. Donougher (2013)]

Halsey, Margaret -- The Folks at Home (1952)

Dave — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 16:52:31 +0000

The great disadvantage of being in a rat race is that it is humiliating. The competitors in a rat race are, by definition, rodents.

Margaret Halsey (1910-1997) American writer
The Folks at Home (1952)
(Source)

Butcher, Jim -- White Night (2007)

Dave — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 15:54:39 +0000

Life’s easier when you can write off others as monsters, as demons, as horrible threats that must be hated and feared. The thing is, you can’t do that without becoming them, just a little.

Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
White Night (2007)
(Source)

Nightingale, Florence -- Letter to her family (5 May 1855)

Dave — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 16:47:34 +0000

What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine — they are not wounds & blood & fever, spotted & low, or dysentery chronic & acute, cold & heat & famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization & disorder on the part of the inferior — jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) English social reformer, statistician, founder of modern nursing
Letter to her family (5 May 1855)
(Source)

Gilligan, James -- Preventing Violence (2001)

Dave — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 18:38:04 +0000

Once we have labeled someone as “evil” there is often no limit to the cruelty and violence we can feel justified in administering to him ….

James Gilligan (b. c. 1936) American psychiatrist and author
Preventing Violence (2001)
(Source)

Pratchett, Terry -- Discworld No. 23, Carpe Jugulum [Granny Weatherwax, Rev. Mightily Oats] (1998)

Dave — Tue, 11 May 2021 17:58:08 +0000

“And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that –”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes –”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things …”

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 23, Carpe Jugulum [Granny Weatherwax, Rev. Mightily Oats] (1998)
(Source)

Pratchett, Terry -- Discworld No. 38, I Shall Wear Midnight (2010)

Dave — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 16:51:56 +0000

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 38, I Shall Wear Midnight (2010)
(Source)

The protagonist, Tiffany, recalling something that Granny Weatherwax had once said.

Hoffer, Eric -- Reflections on the Human Condition, Aphorism 7 (1973)

Dave — Sun, 05 May 2019 22:16:42 +0000

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Reflections on the Human Condition, Aphorism 7 (1973)

Bronowski, Jacob -- The Ascent of Man, Ep. 11 “Knowledge or Certainty” (1973)

Dave — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 20:32:35 +0000

It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974) Polish-English humanist and mathematician
The Ascent of Man, Ep. 11 “Knowledge or Certainty” (1973)

Huxley, Aldous -- Essay (1936), “Words and Behaviour,” The Olive Tree, and Other Essays

Dave — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:10:47 +0000

All propaganda directed against an opposing group has but one aim: to substitute diabolical abstractions for concrete persons. The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. By robbing them of their personality, he puts them outside the pale of moral obligation. Mere symbols can have no rights — particularly when that of which they are symbolical is, by definition, evil.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Essay (1936), “Words and Behaviour,” The Olive Tree, and Other Essays
(Source)

Sontag, Susan -- “Regarding the Torture of Others,” New York Times (23 May 2004)

Dave — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:56:00 +0000

People do these things to other people. Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, do them when they have permission. When they are told or made to feel that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be mistreated, humiliated, tormented. They do them when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior, despicable race or religion. For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
“Regarding the Torture of Others,” New York Times (23 May 2004)

On the photos of Iraqi prisoners tortured by Americans in Abu Ghraib.