Arendt, H. (2006). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1963)

Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” in Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) to capture her disturbing discovery that Adolf Eichmann was neither a psychopathic monster nor a passionate ideologue. He was an ordinary, career-minded bureaucrat who “never realized what he was doing” because he refused to think from the standpoint of anyone else. Evil, Arendt argued, can be committed thoughtlessly when routine, rules, and ambition eclipse judgment and imagination.