Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 1211 |
| AUTHOR: | John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917–63) |
| QUOTATION: | Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | President This remark may have been inspired by the passage from Dante Alighieri’s La Comedia Divina, trans. Geoffrey L. Bickersteth, “Inferno,” canto 3, lines 35–42 (1972): by those disbodied wretches who were loth when living, to be either blamed or praised. … … … … … … Fear to lose beauty caused the heavens to expel these caitiffs; nor, lest to the damned they then gave cause to boast, receives them the deep hell. A more modern-sounding translation: “They are mixed with that repulsive choir of angels … undecided in neutrality. Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out, but even Hell itself would not receive them for fear the wicked there might glory over them.”—Dante’s Inferno, trans. Mark Musa, p. 21 (1971). |
| SUBJECTS: | Morality |