Genocide Quotes - Page 13

• Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that's their gift.

  Denzel Washington

  Religious, Jobs, War

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• No one who has studied Western history can cling to the belief that the Nazis invented genocide.

  Wallace Stegner

  Belief, Nazi, Western

  Wallace Stegner (2000). “Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier”, p.78, Penguin

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• Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building.

  Philip Gourevitch

  Exercise, Community, Building

  Philip Gourevitch (2015). “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Picador Classic”, p.72, Pan Macmillan

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• The modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top

  Sarah Vowell

  Aztec, Cacao, Cafes

  Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

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• More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century. The equivalent of 5 jumbo jets worth of women die in labor each day... life time risk of maternal death is 1,000x higher in a poor country than in the west. That should be an international scandal.

  Nicholas D. Kristof

  Girl, Country, War

  "Half The Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide". Book by Nicholas Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 8, 2008.

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• And in "Elbow Room" the cast sings the glories of westward expansion in the United States, which involved the murder of native peoples and the violent conquest of half of Mexico. Among the lines in the song is one that intones, "There were plenty of fights / To win land right / But the West was meant to be / It was our Manifest Destiny?" Let it suffice to say that happily belting out a tune in which one merrily praises genocide is always easier for those whose ancestors weren't on the receiving end of the deal.

  Tim Wise

  Song, Fighting, Winning

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• For nearly a century, the moral relativism of science has given faith-based religion--that great engine of ignorance and bigotry--a nearly uncontested claim to being the only universal framework for moral wisdom. As a result, the most powerful societies on early spend their time debating issues like gay marriage when they should be focused on problems like nuclear proliferation, genocide, energy security, climate change, poverty, and failing schools.

  Sam Harris

  Powerful, School, Ignorance

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• Who’s going to keep them from wiping us out species by species? Not me. We aren’t prepared for a new demographic of magic-using humans who are sadistic, power hungry, don’t like Inderlanders, and see genocide as an acceptable form of communication.

  Kim Harrison

  Communication, Magic, Hungry

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• The world has never been as divided as it is now, what with religious wars, genocides, a lack of respect for the planet, economic crisis, depression, poverty, with everyone wanting instant solutions to at least some of the world's problems or their own. And things only look bleaker as we head into future.

  Paulo Coelho

  Religious, War, Looks

  Paulo Coelho (2011). “Aleph”, p.1, HarperCollins UK

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• I'd like to teach Iraq about Democracy because we're so experienced with it. First they should know that after 100 years they should free their slaves. Then after 150 years they should give their women the right to vote. Oh, and of course when they start it all they should begin with some genocide and ethnic cleansing.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Life, Years, Iraq

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• By genocide we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.

  Raphael Lemkin

  Mean, Groups, Destruction

  Axis Rule in Occupied Europe preface (1944).

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• I'm nihilistic, antagonistic, violent, horrible - but not obliterated, yet. I just refuse to be beaten down. I think it's stubborness that keeps me going.

  Lydia Lunch

  Thinking, Stubborn, Violent

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• When there were financial difficulties they still managed to provide us with music and art lessons.

  Jerome Isaac Friedman

  Art, Lessons, Financial

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• When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think.

  Steven Pinker

  Children, War, Thinking

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.14, Penguin

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• The whole Indian thing, I always say it's really the American holocaust. It's something we need to look at.

  Skeet Ulrich

  Holocaust, Needs, Looks

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• In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  War, Passion, Holocaust

  "An Interview with Ryszard Kapuscinski: Writing about Suffering". Interview With Thomas Wolfe, quod.lib.umich.edu. 1998.

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• The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them.

  Henry Bolingbroke

  Real, Knowledge, Principles

  "Treasury of Wisdom, Wit and Humor, Odd Comparisons and Proverbs". Book by Adam Woolever, 1891.

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• To think that the new economy is over is like somebody in London in 1830 saying the entire industrial revolution is over because some textile manufacturers in Manchester went broke.

  Alvin Toffler

  Business, Thinking, Textiles

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• Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey cafe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top.

  Sarah Vowell

  Aztec, Office, Waiting

  "The Partly Cloudy Patriot". Book by Sarah Vowell, 2001.

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• Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral - that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year. (25)

  Sam Harris

  Christian, Fighting, Condom Use

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• Except for the scale of the operation, there was nothing unusual about Hitler's massacre of the Jews. Genocide's an old tradition, as human as mother love or cherry pie.

  Edward Abbey

  Mother, Pie, Tradition

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.22, RosettaBooks

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• Only you can prevent the genocide of the imagination.

  Rob Brezsny

  Creativity, Imagination

  Rob Brezsny (2005). “Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings”, p.10, Frog Books

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• The history of the genocide perpetrated during the Second World War does not belong to the past only. It is a ‘living history’ that concerns us all, regardless of our background, culture, or religion. Other genocides have occurred after the Holocaust, on several continents. How can we draw better lessons from the past?

  Irina Bokova

  War, Past, Holocaust

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• I find wholly baffling the widespread belief today that the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was an immoral act, even possibly a war crime to rank with Nazi genocide.

  J. G. Ballard

  War, Hiroshima And Nagasaki, Bombs

  "The End of My War". Sunday Times, 1995.

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• Religious fanaticism has clearly produced, and in all probability will continue to produce, enormous amounts of bickering, fighting, violence, bloodshed, homicide, feuds, wars, and genocide.

  Albert Ellis

  Religious, War, Fighting

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