Dante–The Hottest Places in Hell Are Reserved…

The other day I saw someone tweet the following quote,

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.

-Dante

Honestly, you can just look at that quote and (if you’ve read any Dante) realize this is almost certainly not something that Dante ever said or wrote.

But the story behind the quote is actually fairly interesting. It’s from remarks made by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on June 24, 1963. Kennedy was talking at an event marking the creation of the German Peace Corps. Kennedy told those assembled,

Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.

Bartleby’s suggests the quote is Kennedy’s paraphrase of Dante’s Inferno, Canto 3, Lines 35-42. As Longfellow translated these lines in the first American translation of The Divine Comedy,

And he to me: “This miserable mode
Maintain the melancholy souls of those
Who lived withouten infamy or praise. 36

Commingled are they with that caitiff choir
Of Angels, who have not rebellious been,
Nor faithful were to God, but were for self.

The heavens expelled them, not to be less fair;
Nor them the nethermore abyss receives,
For glory none the damned would have from them.”

Not bad, Mr. President. Not bad.