Tara Dene > Tara's Quotes

“Now from his breast into the eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big serf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“τέτλαθι δή, κραδίη: καὶ κύντερον ἄλλο ποτ᾽ ἔτλης.
-
Be patient, my heart: for you have endured things worse than this before.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Of the many things hidden from the knowledge of man, nothing is more unintelligible than the human heart.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“...an irresistible sleep fell deeply on his eyes, the sweetest, soundest oblivion, still as the sleep of death itself...”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.”
― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

“The other nine, decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now. None of them ever knew, or now knows, Nazism as we knew and know it; and they lived under it, served it, and, indeed, made it. As”
― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

“I think," says Professor Carl Hermann, who never left his homeland, "that even now the outside world does not realize how surprised we non-Nazis were in 1933. When mass dictatorship occurred in Russia, then in Italy, we said to one another, 'That is what happens in backward countries. We are fortunate, for all our troubles, that it cannot happen here.' But it did, worse even than elsewhere, and I think that all the explanations leave some mystery. When I think of it at all, I still say, with unbelief, 'Germany—no, not Germany.”
― Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

“The fact is, I think, that my friends really didn't know. They didn't know because they didn't want to know; but they didn't know. They could have found out, at the time, only if they had wanted to very badly.”
― Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

“I fooled myself. I had to. Everybody has to. If the good had been twice as good and the bad only half as bad, I still ought to have see it, all through as I did in the beginning, because I am, as you say, sensitive. But I didn't want to see it, because I would have then had to think about the consequences of seeing it, what followed from seeing it, what I must do to be decent. I wanted my home and family, my job, my career, a place in the community.”
― Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

“In the body politic as in the body personal, nonresistance to the milder indulgences paves the way for nonresistance to the deadlier.”
― Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

“How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, *Principiis obsta* and *Finem respice*—'Resist the beginnings' and 'Consider the end.' But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men?”
― Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”
― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

“Nine years later, in 1943, the Jews of Eichdorf were “sent away.” In such a small community they could not be “sent” unnoticed. After the war one of their neighbors was telling about it: “Everybody knew, but nobody came out on the street. Some looked from behind their curtains, not many.” “Did you?” “No.” “Why not?” “Why? What good is it to look?”
― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

“No—how widely was the whole thing, or anything, known?” “Oh. Widely, very widely.” “How?” “Oh, things seeped through somehow, always quietly, always indirectly. So people heard rumors, and the rest they could guess. Of course, most people did not believe the stories of Jews or other opponents of the regime. It was naturally thought that such persons would all exaggerate.”
― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

“You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow... But the one great shocking occasion when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, ... never comes. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked ... but of course, this isn't the way it happens. In between comes all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you ... and you see that everything - everything - has changed ... Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.”
― Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

“one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.”
― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

“Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn’t, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.”
― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

“My ten friends had been told, not since 1939 but since 1933, that their nation was fighting for its life.”
― Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45