Atrocities Quotes

Colonial atrocities have prepared the soil; it is for socialists to sow the seeds of revolution.

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.

Human beings can be redeemed. Empires cannot. Our refusal to face the truth about empire, our refusal to defy the multitudinous crimes and atrocities of empire, has brought about the nightmare Malcolm predicted. And as the Digital Age and our post-literate society implant a terrifying historical amnesia, these crimes are erased as swiftly as they are committed.

As a Jew I cannot sit idle while genocidal atrocities continue to unfold in Darfur, Sudan.

Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence.

Tradition will accustom people to any atrocity

Why should American atrocities be merely unsettling, but a trip to Hanoi unconscionable?

The United Nations has become a largely irrelevant, if not positively destructive institution, and the just-released U.N. report on the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, proves the point.

We receive reports now on a daily basis from our own people on the ground in Darfur on widespread atrocities and grave violations of human rights against the civilian population.

Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.

Those who can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities.

What is happening in Nigeria is an absolute atrocity.

The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

Violence is not the answer, it doesn’t work any more. We are at the end of the worst century in which the greatest atrocities in the history of the world have occurred... The nature of human beings must change. We must cultivate love and compassion.

Other human rights atrocities from African slavery to the killing fields of Cambodia, the Armenian and Rwandan Genocides are all of course to be remembered, but diluting their particularity or comparing degrees of evil does no good.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid.

The intrusions of the white race and the non- compliance with treaty obligations have been followed by atrocities that could alone satisfy a savage and revengeful spirit.

Would we hold liberty, we must have charity- charity to others, charity to ourselves, crawling up from the moist ovens of a steaming world, still carrying the passional equipment of our ferocious ancestors, emerging from black superstition amid carnage and atrocity to our perilous present.

Unscrupulous agitators have been at work spreading atrocity stories which can only be compared with those lies that were fabricated by the same instigators at the beginning of the Great War.

I've been vegetarian since the 80s and, lately, even vegan. And I once happened to witness the slaughter of a cow. What atrocity must undergo an animal to satisfy the appetite of those fat men who eat hamburgers!

The death is unfortunate. It is an accident. It is not police atrocity . It is a small and petty matter.

Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence.

My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state... It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.

Atrocities are human nature - they don't have political beliefs, color, creed or anything like that. They just happen, it's human.

Once we know of atrocities we cannot remain silent, and knowledge inevitably leads to an urge to protect the innocent.

If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.

The first atrocity, the first war crime committed in any war of aggression by the aggressors is against the truth.

Words that are saturated with lies or atrocity, do not easily resume life.

Honduras has become a murder capital of the world; there's horrible atrocities, infanticide, murder of women is way up, and people are fleeing in desperation. They come to the border, and we put them in trucks and send them back to Mexico to die. And here people are scared of illegal immigrants - that's what we're doing. It's pretty shocking.

The problem is that the Iraqi people are facing atrocities from both sides - Zarqawi and also the American troops at times. The Zarqawi groups uses car bombs, the Americans use other bombs. You also know what they do in the prisons.

3,000 of my neighbors were murdered. My country was, utterly unprovoked, savagely attacked. I wish all those responsible for the atrocity of 9/11 to burn in Hell.

There are always people willing to commit unspeakable human atrocity in exchange for a little power and privilege.

There is direct correlation between a society lacking in artistic vision to lack of social conscience, i.e., crime, poverty, and senseless, violent atrocities, materialism.

I don't know how to stop the atrocities. I don't know how to make people care. But looking into my sister's eyes, we seem to have carved out something between us that none of the madness can touch. Invisible threads.

Let's be clear about one indisputable fact: capitalism vigorously pursued has never produced the atrocities - starvation, tyranny, and genocide - that are produced by statism vigorously pursued. Nothing remotely close.

Likewise to Saudi Arabia, where we just were selling another billion dollars worth of weapons, and we're not only selling the weapons but we are complicit in the war effort in Yemen where there are also incredible atrocities and war crimes being committed.

Some kind of settlement in Kashmir is crucial for both countries [Pakistan and India]. It's also tearing India apart with horrible atrocities in the region which is controlled by Indian armed forces.

The atrocities in Cambodia are a direct and understandable response to the violence of the imperial system.

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

What concerned me was that [James Mattis] played not only a critical role as a battlefield commander in Fallujah, but also, afterwards, when he was promoted to various other higher-ranking positions, he served as a convening authority in court-martial proceedings against various marines who had been accused of atrocities - for example, in the Haditha massacre, where a group of marines went on a killing spree after one in their unit was killed.

What can art really do in the face of atrocity?

It is true that all of us are the beneficiaries of crimes committed by our ancestors, and it is true that nothing can be done about that now because the victims are dead and the survivors are innocent. These are good reasons for keeping our mouths shut about the past: but tell me, what are our reasons for silence about atrocities still to come?

The reign of terror to which France submitted has been more justly termed "the reign of cowardice." One knows not which most to execrate,--the nation that could submit to suffer such atrocities, or that low and bloodthirsty demagogue that could inflict them. France, in succumbing to such a wretch as Robespierre, exhibited, not her patience, but her pusillanimity.

The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque.

The Augustinian doctrine of the damnation of unbaptized infants and the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation . . . surpass in atrocity any tenets that have ever been admitted into any pagan creed.

The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.

In the late 1990s, some of the worst terrorist atrocities in the world were what the Turkish government itself called state terror, namely massive atrocities, 80 percent of the arms coming from the United States, millions of refugees, tens of thousands of people killed, hideous repression, that's international terror, and we can go on and on.

We know that often holding those who have carried out mass atrocities accountable is at times our best tool to prevent future atrocities.

No matter how inured you get to atrocities, you're still always stunned and shocked by how cruel and wasteful Homo sapiens can be.