Torture Quotes - Page 2

• The aim of torture is to destroy a person as a human being, to destroy their identity and soul. It is more evil than murder... Today we know that survivors of torture can be helped to regain their health and strength, and in helping them we take the weapon from their torturers. They sought the destruction of other human beings. We have proved that they have not succeeded.

  Inge Genefke

  Strength, Evil, Soul

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• Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Two, Evil, Choices

  "Torture? No. Except …" by Charles Krauthammer, jewishworldreview.com. May 1, 2009.

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• Reality is never as bad as a nightmare, as the mental tortures we inflict on ourselves.

  Sammy Davis, Jr.

  Reality, Nightmare, Mental Health

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• The healthy man does not torture others.

  Carl Jung

  Men, Healthy, Doe

  Carl Gustav Jung, Herbert Read, Michael Scott Montague Fordham, Gerhard Adler (1977). “The Collected Works of C.G. Jung: The Symbolic life”

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• Don't tell me it doesn't work. Torture works. Okay, folks?

  Donald Trump

  Okay, Folks

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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• Torture is such a slippery slope; as soon as you allow a society or any legal system to do that, almost instantly you get a situation where people are being tortured for very trivial reasons.

  Iain Banks

  People, Legal System, Slippery Slope

  "Iain Banks: Even at my age I still have something to prove". Interview With Maxton Walker, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2009.

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• The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy.

  Andrew Sullivan

  Religious, Order, Political

  "Imaginationland". "The Daily Dish", www.theatlantic.com. October 25, 2007.

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• Loneliness is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Loneliness, Inspiration

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• The alternative position to whether torture is acceptable - that's not an alternative position, that's barbarism. The question here is not whether torture is acceptable or whether it works. It should be simply seen as a war crime. There's no other position on torture.

  Henry Giroux

  War, Crime

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• There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him.

  Umberto Eco

  Pain, Animal, Heaven

  Umberto Eco (2014). “The Name of the Rose”, p.65, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I have spoken with people at the highest level of intelligence. And I asked them the question, "Does it work? Does torture work?" And the answer was, "Yes, absolutely."

  Donald Trump

  People, Doe, Answers

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• Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Men, Needs, Appetite

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• Love is a reciprocal torture.

  Marcel Proust

  Love, Literature, Reciprocal

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• Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.

  Francis Bacon

  Law, Judging, Construction

  Francis Bacon, David Mallet (1740). “The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, Lord High Chancellor of England ...: With Several Additional Pieces, Never Before Printed in Any Edition of His Works. To which is Prefixed, a New Life of the Author”, p.377

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• Man torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inanimate fear. You become the very soul of anesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now.

  Henry Miller

  Fear, Dark, Men

  Henry Miller (1945). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, [New York] : New directions

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• This is a day on which we pay our respects to those who have endured the unimaginable. This is an occasion for the world to speak up against the unspeakable. It is long overdue that a day be dedicated to remembering and supporting the many victims and survivors of torture around the world.

  Kofi Annan

  Long, Survivor, World

  "Secretary-General Appeals to Governments and Members of Civil Society to Take Action to Defeat Torture and Torturers Everywhere". Kofi Annan's message on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture (June 26), www.un.org. June 23, 1998.

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• So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Fire, People, Farce

  "No Exit". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, Garcin, act 1, sc. 5, 1944.

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• I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.

  Haim Ginott

  Inspirational, Teacher, Children

  "Fair Isn't Always Equal: Assessing & Grading in the Differentiated Classroom". Book by Rick Wormeli, p. 9, 2006.

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• All punishments by which the human body might be maimed are barbarbarism.

  Catherine the Great

  Punishment, Body, Might

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• Torture is banned but in two-thirds of the world's countries it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or "disappearance" to be carried out by their officials with impunity.

  Peter Benenson

  Country, Government, Two

  The Amnesty International Annual Report (p. 22), 2002.

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• Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

  George Orwell

  Color, Atrocities Committed, Tyrants

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• Extensive violations of human rights (torture, forced reduction of living standards for much of the population, police-sponsored death squads, destruction of representative institutions or of independent unions, etc.) are directly correlated with US government support. The linkage is not accidental; rather it is systematic. The reason is obvious enough. Client fascism often improves the business climate for American corporations, quite generally the guiding factor in foreign policy.

  Noam Chomsky

  Independent, Violation Of Human Rights, Government

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• In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture cannot be contravened under any circumstances.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Prohibition, Circumstances, Regard

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• Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Tasks, Cleaning, Endless

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• I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a student's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a student humanized or de-humanized.

  Haim Ginott

  Inspirational, Life, Education

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