Genocide Quotes

• I say to all those leaders, do not look the other way. Do not hesitate... It is within your power to avoid a genocide of humanity.

  Nelson Mandela

  Leader, Looks, Way

  "Excerpts: Mandela's Live 8 speech". news.bbc.co.uk. July 3, 2005.

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• What distinguishes genocide from murder, and even from acts of political murder that claim as many victims, is the intent. The crime is wanting to make a people extinct. The idea is the crime.

  Philip Gourevitch

  Ideas, People, Political

  Philip Gourevitch (2015). “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Picador Classic”, p.142, Pan Macmillan

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• A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.

  Elie Wiesel

  Men, Destruction, Annihilation

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• Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Class, Political, Discrimination

  "Trouble and Strife", Issues 13-17 (p. 45), 1988.

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• As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love.

  Desmond Tutu

  Dance, War, Evil

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• You will be judged in years to come by how you responded to genocide on your watch.

  Nicholas D. Kristof

  Years, Watches, Literature

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• Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.

  Howard Zinn

  Peace, War, History

  Howard Zinn (2011). “The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy”, p.410, Seven Stories Press

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• There aren't just bad people that commit genocide; we are all capable of it. It's our evolutionary history.

  James Lovelock

  People, Deep Thought, Commit

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• You have to understand what caused genocide to happen. Or it will happen again.

  Tim Walz

  Happens

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• We can make a difference. We can save lives. We can stop the genocide.

  Kendrick Meek

  Differences, Making A Difference, Save A Life

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• An ideology that divides the world into those who are worth more and those who are worth less, into superior and inferior beings, does not have to reach the dimensions of the German genocide to be wrong.

  Amira Hass

  Doe, World, Dimensions

  "Using the Holocaust to Ward Off Criticism" by Amira Hass, www.haaretz.com. March 16, 2005.

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• Any time you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship or the civil rights of a people, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress. Instead, you have to take that government to the World Court and accuse it of genocide and all of the other crimes that it is guilty of today.

  Malcolm X

  Rights, Government, People

  "The Ballot or The Bullet (Detroit Version)". Malcolm X's speech at a meeting sponsored by the Congress for Racial Equality in Detroit, Michigan, April 12, 1964.

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• The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.

  Noam Chomsky

  Bible, Atheist, Book

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• 'Never again' is the rallying cry for all who believe that mankind must speak out against genocide.

  Jon Corzine

  Believe, Speaks Out, Rallying Cry

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• What connects two thousand years of genocide? Too much power in too few hands.

  Simon Wiesenthal

  Power, Hands, Years

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• A process of genocide is being carried out before the eyes of the world.

  Pope John Paul II

  Eye, World, Process

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• I have issued the command, and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad, that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death's-head formation in readiness, for the present only in the East, with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?

  Adolf Hitler

  Time, Children, War

  Speech at Obersalzberg, August 22, 1939.

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• The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn't. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators, possible bystanders.

  Yehuda Bauer

  Bystanders, Holocaust, May

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• Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. ... We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Race, Population, Doctrine

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• So let us call genocide, genocide. Let us not minimize the deliberate murder of 1.5 million people. Let us have a moral victory that can shine as a light to all nations.

  Adam Schiff

  Light, People, Shining

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• It is generally not known in the world that, in the years preceding 1916, there was a concerted effort made to eliminate all the Armenian people, probably one of the greatest tragedies that ever befell any group. And there weren't any Nuremberg trials.

  Jimmy Carter

  Years, People, Effort

  United States. President (1977-1981 : Carter), Jimmy Carter (1978). “Jimmy Carter”

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• The 20th century taught us how far unbridled evil can and will go when the world fails to confront it. It is time that we heed the lessons of the 20th century and stand up to these murderers. It is time that we end genocide in the 21st century.

  Allyson Schwartz

  Taught Us, Evil, World

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• But history does matter. There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Bosnians and the Rwandans. There are obviously more, but, really, how much genocide can one sentence handle?

  Chris Bohjalian

  Doe, Lines, Matter

  FaceBook post by Chris Bohjalian from Apr 04, 2015

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• Of the 2,000,000 Armenians in Turkey in 1914, one million have been slaughtered, and the survivors only 130,000 remain in Turkey and the rest are refugees and exiles. Armenian property losses are valued at over 5,000,000,000 dollars are more than three fourths of the estimated wealth of the Armenian race.

  Herbert Adams Gibbons

  Loss, Turkeys, Race

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• When I go around in America and I see the bulk of the white people, they do not feel oppressed; they feel powerless... and we understand the psychological genocide that they have already inflicted upon their own people.

  John Trudell

  White, America, People

  "The Indigenous Voice: Visions and Realities (Volume 2)". Book edited by Roger Moody, 1988.

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