“In my work with the (Nuremberg Trial) defendants, I was searching for the nature of evil, and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy ... a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

  • Captain G.M. Gilbert, US Army

@Natasha_Jay Some people on the Internet seem to say they have not found the origin of this quote and while I have found this quotation from dozens of places none of them gives the source.

EG. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/books/review/empathy-paul-bloom-joe-rigney-hannah-arendt-allie-beth-stuckey.html

The Politics of the War on Empathy

It was once considered a virtue. Why do some people now think it’s a bad thing?

The New York Times