Atrocities Quotes

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire

“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.

Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.

The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.

The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called "doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call "dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . .”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“I'm convinced that most men don't know what they believe, rather, they only know what they wish to believe. How many people blame God for man's atrocities, but wouldn't dream of imprisoning a mother for her son's crime?”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“The terrified men did not move. Then Nadia Fedin did something instinctive; she drew her Nagant revolver and fired three short bursts into the head of the nearest soldier. Stepan Ivanovich’s skull burst like a ripe cabbage showering his horrified comrades with viscous brain and bits of bone.”
― KGE Konkel, Who Has Buried the Dead?: From Stalin to Putin … The last great secret of World War Two

“Few would have seen Solomon and realised they were looking at one of wartime London’s top gangsters. With his receding hairline, thick-lenses spectacles, sober tie and dark two-piece suit, he resembled a local bank manager, accountant or shop owner.”
― Mark Ellis, Death of an Officer

“With the rum bottle empty, Marsh had moved on to the Guinness in the kitchen cupboard. After a bottle and a half, he’d decided that action was required.the most satisfying sort of action he could think of was ending the little boy’s life.”
― Mark Ellis, Death of an Officer

“I really do think that if for one week in the United States we saw the true face of war, we saw people's limbs sheared off, we saw kids blown apart, for one week, war would be eradicated. Instead, what we see in the U.S. media is the video war game. ”
― Amy Goodman

“Psychological trauma is an affliction of the powerless. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.… Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life.… They confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror, and evoke the responses of catastrophe.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“The character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): 'And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, 'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women- children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.'

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.

Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings?

In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“The oak trees seemed as though they were playing instruments; here a gentle violin, over there two harps in harmony, flutes and other woodwinds joined the tree orchestra.”
― Robert Reid, The Empress:

“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?”
― Damon Knight, One Side Laughing: Stories Unlike Other Stories

“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.”
― Lisa Shannon, A Thousand Sisters: My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman

“McGuire started to rub the soap across himself, amazed at the change in his own skin colour as the filth of years of poverty floated off him.”
― Nigel Seed, No Road to Khartoum

“My worry is that they will look down on our enemies. They have seen the Arabs in these mud towns and think the Dervishes are the same quality. That can’t be true. These are the people that wiped out Billy Hicks and his column. He had modern weapons and they had sticks and swords. That speaks to a rare sort of courage and determination.”
― Nigel Seed, No Road to Khartoum

“For Sade, all tenderness is false, a deceit, a trap; all pleasure contains within itself the seeds of atrocities; all beds are minefields.”
― Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography

“I do not know where Viktor and Rudolf were taken. I cannot find the records. I never Elisabeth or Iggie.

It is possible that they were taken to the Hotel Metropole, which has been sequestered as the headquarters of the Gestapo. There are many other lock-ups for this flood of Jews. They are beaten, of course; but they are also forbidden to shave or wash so that they look even more degenerate. This because it is important to address the old affront of Jews not looking like Jews. This processing of stripping away your respectability, taking away your watch-chain, or your shoes or your belt, so that you stumble to hold up your trousers with one hand, is a way of returning everyone to the shtetl, stripping you back to your essential character - wandering, unshaven, bowed with your possessions on your back. You are supposed to end up looking like a cartoon from Der Stuermer, Streicher's tabloid that is now sold on the streets of Vienna. They take away your reading glasses.”
― Edmund de Waal, The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss

“We donot qualify as humans going by our acts, but we surely prove through our vulnerability and sufferings!” ”
― Ramana Pemmaraju

“Be a valiant shield to stand against atrocities.
If not you, who else will call that duty mine”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mad About Humans: World Maker's Almanac

“You are young, child. You have much to learn about the ways of the world-'

'Do not,' Rhys said with deadly quiet, 'condescend to her.' The eldest queen- who was but a child to him, to his centuries of existence- had the good sense to look nervous at that tone. Rhys's eyes were glazed, his face as unforgiving as his voice as he went on, 'Do not insult Feyre for speaking with her heart, with compassion for those who cannot defend themselves, when you speak from only selfishness and cowardice.'

The eldest stiffened. 'For the greater good-'

'Many atrocities,' Rhys purred, 'have been done in the name of the greater good.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“Hold just enough ego to be a man of your word, and to stand against evil mobs who force the absurd.”
― Criss Jami

“Turns out if you write about police violence and atrocities, if you wait a month, it'll happen again, so... That's America.”
― Colson Whitehead

“Those who can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities”
― Voltaire

“Atrocities are a way of life when you're human.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“they will reflexively demand that somebody do something. The worst among us always see this as an opportunity for political gain. The facts don’t matter to them. It is simple stimulus and response. There’s a tragedy, so they’re going to capitalize on it for their benefit. They’ll certainly offer a something. Unfortunately the thing they offer usually wouldn’t have prevented the crime, it punishes those who had nothing to do with it, and actually makes the problem worse by paving the way for more awful events in the future.”
― Larry Correia, In Defense of the Second Amendment

“,,The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness (...) Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried".

,,Filk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told".

,,The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma".

,,When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery".”
― Judith Herman

“Many in your world have the idea that there has been progress since my day, that people have become more humane, that atrocities were rife back then but have diminished in your era, though I don't know how anyone who has been paying attention can hold such a view.”
― Margaret Atwood, Old Babes in the Wood: Stories

“When you believe in absurdities, it will be very easy for you to commit atrocities.”
― Chidi Ejeagba

“The Nuremberg judges
added illegal hanging atrocities
to violent Hitlerian
racist ferocities.”
― Saiom Shriver

“Even with all of the evil ravaging the world today, one must trust that some people are still capable of doing good.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Sips And Little Portions

“There comes from this, then, at least a working definition of a soul: one’s capacity to sit with the mysteries of a thing that cannot in any rational way, be understood – only felt, only moved through. And sometimes that thing is so grotesque — what we do to one another so grotesque — that sitting with it feels an affront to the notion of art as a conduit of beauty. Still, sit. Sit.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This