Perpetrators Quotes

• In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.

  Judith Lewis Herman

  Escaping, Order, Silence

  Judith Lewis Herman (1997). “Trauma and Recovery”, p.8, Basic Books

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• Justice for the major perpetrators cannot be separated from the vindication of the rights of the individual victim.

  Jalal Talabani

  Rights, Justice, Individual

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• Can postmodernism hold the perpetrators of genocide accountable?

  Catharine MacKinnon

  Genocide, Postmodernism, Post Modernism

  Catharine A. MacKinnon (2007). “Are Women Human?”, p.58, Harvard University Press

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• For perpetrators, when they apologize and experience remorse, it gives them a chance to reclaim their own humanity. Some rise to the moral challenge. Others of course don't care, and they continue acting with contempt.

  Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

  Forgiveness, Giving, Challenges

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• Perpetrators who receive the gift of forgiveness are given a chance to change

  Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

  Forgiveness, Chance, Given

  Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela (2013). “A Human Being Died That Night: Forgiving Apartheid's Chief Killer”, p.124, Portobello Books

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• an act of forgiveness sets the victim apart from the perpetrator, who failed to act humanly towards the victim at the time he committed his crime.

  Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

  Forgiveness, Crime, Victim

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• One reason that I embarked on a study of Nazi doctors was that in this personal journey, I had the feeling increasingly that I did want to do a Holocaust study and that increasingly I wanted it to be of perpetrators, which I thought was more needed.

  Robert Jay Lifton

  Journey, Doctors, Holocaust

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• The Children's Safety Act will help protect children from the perpetrators of these vile crimes by strengthening notification requirements for sex offenders and increasing criminal penalties.

  James T. Walsh

  Sex, Children, Safety

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• The more you face the truth, the angrier you will probably become. You have a right to be angry about being sexually abused. You have a right to be angry with the perpetrator, regardless of who it was, how long ago the sexual abuse occurred, or how much he/she has changed.

  Beverly Engel

  Long Ago, Abuse, Faces

  39 Copy quote

• It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.

  Judith Lewis Herman

  Pain, Bystanders, Speak No Evil

  Judith Lewis Herman (1997). “Trauma and Recovery”, p.7, Basic Books

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• There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges--the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Light, True Power, Evil

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.103, Penguin

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• To triumph fully, evil needs two victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated; the second victory, when evil is returned. After the first victory, evil would die if the second victory did not infuse it with new life.

  Miroslav Volf

  Two, Evil, Victory

  Miroslav Volf (2006). “The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World”, p.9, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• Over the years, Charlie [Munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] and I have observed many accounting-based frauds of staggering size. Few of the perpetrators have been punished; many have not even been censured. It has been far safer to steal large sums with pen than small sums with a gun.

  Warren Buffett

  Gun, Years, Vices

  Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman's Letter, www.berkshirehathaway.com. 1988.

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• The roots of any evil deed can be traced to the perpetrator's refusal to experience pain.

  Keith Ablow

  Pain, Roots, Evil

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• Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy, but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness.

  Timothy Keller

  Forgiveness, Religious, Cost

  Timothy Keller (2008). “The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith”, p.32, Penguin

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• Each way to suicide is its own: intensely private, unknowable, and terrible. Suicide will have seemed to its perpetrator the last and best of bad possibilities, and any attempt by the living to chart this final terrain of life can be only a sketch, maddeningly incomplete

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Finals, Way

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• When you forgive, that means you absorb the loss and the debt. You bear it yourself. All forgiveness, then, is costly.

  Timothy Keller

  Mean, Loss, Forgiving

  Timothy Keller (2009). “Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters”, p.56, Penguin

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• God's grace and forgiveness, while free to the recipient, are always costly for the giver.

  Timothy Keller

  Forgiveness, Grace, Giver

  Timothy Keller (2009). “Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters”, p.56, Penguin

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• When you're the victim of the behavior, it's black and white; when you're the perpetrator, there are a million shades of gray.

  Laura Schlessinger

  Black And White, Shade, Behavior

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• The world's full of victims and the world's full of terrible perpetrators and I want them identified and caught.

  Emily Yoffe

  World, Want, Victim

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• The perpetrators of the actual bad stuff that does real and lasting harm to people, like leakage of industrial chemicals into water systems, seem to get not so much as a second glance; the bloviation from media pundits and think tanks creates false problems that waste time and energy debunking.

  Henry Rollins

  Real, Thinking, Media

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• The guarantee of safety in a battering relationship can never be based upon a promise from the perpetrator, no matter how heartfelt. Rather, it must be based upon the self-protective capability of the victim. Until the victim has developed a detailed and realistic contingency plan and has demonstrated her ability to carry it out, she remains in danger of repeated abuse.

  Judith Lewis Herman

  Self, Safety, Heartfelt

  "Trauma and Recovery". Book by Judith Lewis Herman, 1992.

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• If no one remembers a misdeed or names it publically, it remains invisible. To the observer, its victim is not a victim and its perpetrator is not a perpetrator; both are misperceived because the suffering of the one and the violence of the other go unseen. A double injustice occurs-the first when the original deed is done and the second when it disappears.

  Miroslav Volf

  Names, Suffering, Unseen

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• Sins are like chains and locks preventing their perpetrator from roaming the vast garden of Tawheed and reaping the fruits of righteous actions.

  Ibn Taymiyyah

  Garden, Locks, Roaming

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• Islam asserts that on the unappealable Day of Judgment every perpetrator of the image of a living creature will be raised from the dead with his works, and he will be commanded to bring them to life, and he will fail, and be cast out with them into the fires of punishment.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Fire, Punishment, Islam

  Jorge Luis Borges (1964). “Dreamtigers”, p.27, University of Texas Press

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