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“For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain.' Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all… He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is 'banal' and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, this is still far from calling it commonplace… That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man—that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more
than other people, but care more about their opinion than our
own. If a god appeared to us—or a wise human being, even
—and prohibited us from concealing our thoughts or
imagining anything without immediately shouting it out, we
wouldn’t make it through a single day. That’s how much we
value other people’s opinions—instead of our own.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“While on the one hand," he said, "our most prominent scientists, the inexhaustible heroes of this perennial confusion, have finally and somewhat unfortunately extricated themselves from the metaphor of godhead, they have immediately fallen into the trap of regarding this oppressive history as some kind of triumphant march, a supernatural progress following, what they call, the victory of 'will and intellect', and though, as you know, I am no longer capable of being the least surprised by this, I must confess to you I still cannot understand why it should be the cause of such universal celebration for them that we have climbed out of the trees. Do they think it's good like this? I find nothing amusing in it. Furthermore it doesn't fit us properly: you only have to consider how long, even after thousands of years of practice, we can keep going on two legs. Half a day, my dear friend, and we shouldn't forget it.”
― László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance

“All our best men
are laughed at
in this nightmare land
but the newspapers preen
in virtue - Throughout
the world the left & right
the east & west, are both vicious”
― Jack Kerouac, Pomes All Sizes