TORTURE QUOTES II
quotations about torture
Does torture work? Donald Trump believes so. If constant use over thousands of years of human history indicates efficacy then he might seem to be right. The use of coercion, including the inflicting of pain and extreme discomfort, to extract information has been attractive to those charged with protecting the public -- as well as to criminals, psychopaths, warlords, dictators and sadists, for as long as any have existed.
JASON BURKE
"Does torture work -- and is it worth the cost?", The Guardian, January 26, 2017
The object of torture is torture.
GEORGE ORWELL
1984
The healthy man does not torture others -- generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.
CARL JUNG
"Return to the Simple Life", DU, vol. 1
Torture is a crime against humanity. Standing up against torture does not mean upholding one particular community, but upholding human dignity.
OZTURK TURKDOGAN
"Police officers become victims of torture in Turkey", Al-Monitor, May 15, 2017
Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it.
MARK LAWRENCE
Prince of Thorns
Healing from torture is a painful and long-term process, as the expanding literature on this subject makes clear. Many survivors of torture must struggle daily to live with their memories. As should be expected, the idea of forgiving one's torturer and reconciling with one's former opponents or repressors is an idea that not all are willing to embrace. These two tasks--healing and reconciliation--together form the backbone of perhaps the most difficult side of any transition out of a repressive past.
PRISCILLA B. HAYNER
"The Contribution of Truth Commissions", The Phenomenon of Torture: Readings and Commentary
The advocate for torture, would wish to see the strongest hand joined to the basest heart, and the weakest head. Engendered in intellectual, and carried on in artificial darkness, torture is a trial, not of guilt, but of nerve, not of innocence, but of endurance; it perverts the whole order of things, for it compels the weak, to affirm that which is false, and determines the strong, to deny that which is true; it converts the criminal into the evidence, the judge into the executioner, and makes a direr punishment than would follow guilt, precede it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
I support tough interrogation techniques, enhanced interrogation techniques, in circumstances where there is a ticking time bomb, a ticking bomb ... I do not support torture, but I do support enhanced interrogation techniques to learn from terrorists what we need to learn to keep the bombs from going off.
MITT ROMNEY
"Romney Backs Interrogation, Patriot Act", Washington Post, July 20, 2007
I mentioned to one of the gaolers my sense of this hardship, as an obstinate guilty person might deny the truth, whilst an innocent one, less courageous, might very readily, to relieve himself from such a state of misery, make a false confession. His answer was laconic: "Lago confess" ... "They soon confess."
WILLIAM SAMPSON
writing of his experience under torture, Memoirs of William Sampson
Personally I didn't believe God had a private torture chamber. Hell was being cut off from God, cut off from his power, his energy, Him.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Burnt Offerings
Pain forces even the innocent to lie.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
attributed, The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
Torture is a social practice, not a legal policy. It lives in society, not in a CIA vault guarded by lawyers. And torture returns with decommissioned soldiers.... They become police and private security guards, and they get ahead using techniques they know. This has happened twice already in American history. And it's likely this war's tortures will be coming to a neighborhood near you.
DARIUS REJALI
"Movies of Modern Torture as Convenient Truths", Screening Torture: Media Representations of the State of Terror and Political Domination
Notwithstanding the available, detailed knowledge of the devastating and corrosive impact of torture, it clearly retains its attraction, particularly in its populist incarnation. It promises security and suggests control, and ultimately serves as reassurance that "we" establish order on "our" terms.
LUTZ OETTE
"Trump's embrace of torture is irresponsible and explosive", The Conversation, January 31, 2017
My back was broken and refrozen during these torture sessions. My knees were further damaged. My body was wrenched apart. There was nothing particularly imaginative about the North Vietnamese techniques. They hadn't improved much on the devices of the Spanish Inquisition. They bent things that didn't bend; they separated things meant to stay together.
LEO K. THORSNESS
"New York Times obituary for Vietnam POW and Medal of Honor recipient omits key detail: He supported waterboarding", American Enterprise Institute, May 4, 2017
Wire-draw his skin, spin all his nerves like hair,
And work his tortur'd flesh as thin as flame.
NATHANIEL LEE
Constantine the Great
Fear not torture of the body; but of the soul.
ANNE ASKEW
attributed, Day's Collacon
Torture persists -- and so do the arguments in its favor. Torture is nevertheless nearly universally regarded as abhorrent, unlike so many other moral issues. The arguments offered in its favor are nearly all arguments from exception -- arguments that defend torture as the lesser of two evils, but an evil all the same.
JEREMY WISNEWSKI
Understanding Torture
It's sort of like hazing, a fraternity prank. Sort of like that kind of fun.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
statement about abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib by U. S. soldiers, They Said What?: Astonishing Quotes on American Democracy, Power, and Dissent
Bring forth the rack
Fetch hither cords, and knives, and sulphurous flames!
He shall be bound and gash'd, his skin fleec'd off, and burnt alive...
He shall be hours, days, years, a-dying.
NATHANIEL LEE
Oedipus
Anyone who has been tortured remains tortured. Anyone who has suffered torture will never again be at ease in the world, the abomination of the annihilation is never extinguished. Faith in humanity, already cracked with the first slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again.
JEAN AMERY
attributed, The Drowned and the Saved