Quotes

As soon as our own propaganda admits so much as a glimmer of right on the other side, the foundation for doubt in our own right has been laid

The truth lies in communicating with each other, and mutual recognition of each other’s dignity,

We all consecrate murder and terror when we have the temerity to think that everything is meaningless.

After Auschwitz no further poems are possible, except on the foundation of Auschwitz itself

Governments may think and say as they like, but force cannot be eliminated, and it is the only real and unanswerable power. We are told that the pen is mightier than the sword, but I know which of these weapons I would choose

Nobody's ever given peace a complete chance. Gandhi tried it. Martin Luther King tried it. But they were shot

...he [Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all ‘progressive’ thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed....I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation or creed

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men

In Germany, the Nazis came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I was a Protestant so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me...By that time there was no one to speak up for anyone