Quotes & Sayings About Armenian Genocide

The attempt to justify and rationalize the death of a whole nation, including women, children, the old and infirm, must itself be considered a crime against humanity. — Taner Akcam

The Lebanese government has officially recognized the Armenian genocide, but nowhere is there any official memorial to the victims of the World War I famine. — Louis Farshee

You can talk about Holocaust denial, but it's really marginal for the most part. What is compelling about the Armenian genocide, is how it has been forgotten. — Atom Egoyan

The Armenian Genocide is such a controversial and very sensitive issue because the Turkish and Armenian people disagree about the facts of what actually happened. I know how strongly Armenians feel about the Genocide, and how it's never been recognised. At the same time, I do not hold today's generation of people accountable. — Khloe Kardashian

No actions by gangs or individuals can justify the deaths of eight hundred thousand people. — Taner Akcam

If Turkey is prepared to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, then its leaders can proceed immediately to direct dialogue with its counterparts in Armenia to define a common vision for the future. — Mark Foley

The AXA and New York Life settlements are important building blocks not only toward seeking financial recovery for the losses resulting from the Armenian Genocide but also in our ultimate goal, which is for Turkey and the US to officially acknowledge the genocide. — Mark Geragos

The Armenian genocide was also a Holocaust, but it wasn't my Holocaust. — Edgar Hilsenrath

The few surviving Armenians no longer ask to go home. They do not ask for restitution. They ask simply to have the memory of their obliteration acknowledged. It is a moral obsession, the lonely legacy passed onto the third and fourth generation who no longer speak Armenian but who carry within them the seeds of resentment that will not be quashed. — Chris Hedges

We are confident that the normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations can become the greatest input of the recent decades in achieving peace and stability in the South Caucasus. With this vision, we have agreed to move forward without any preconditions, not making our relations contingent upon Turkey's recognition of the Armenian Genocide. However, if, as many suspect, it is proven that Turkey's goal is to protract, rather than to normalize relations, we will have to discontinue the process. — Serzh Sargsyan

I'm half-Armenian. Even though my grandparents did not discuss the genocide, and my father - like many sons and daughters of immigrants - wanted to be as 'American' as possible, I was always aware of it. How could I not be? — Chris Bohjalian

The first genocide of the 21st century was against you, the Armenian people. — Pope Francis

Never underestimate the power of good but never ignore evil lurking in the hearts of men.
Rose of Life — Sonia Rumzi

Before the First World War, in many places military officers who had not taken part directly in operations became liable one way or another under the jurisprudence and military law of their own countries. But the question of prosecuting the political authorities--the people who ran the country--had not yet been considered. Calls during the war to hold the Ottoman political elite and the German kaiser personally responsible for the Armenian massacres and to prosecute them on those grounds heralded a turning point. From that point on, personal responsibility and prosecution--even of those in the political sphere--became one of the most important principles of international law. — Taner Akcam

It's time to recognise the Armenian Genocide. — Kim Kardashian

Go ahead, kill without mercy. After all, who remembers today the Armenian Genocide? — Adolf Hitler

The Armenian genocide was a horrific illustration of the convulsions that could seize a multi-ethnic polity trying to mutate from empire into nation state. — Niall Ferguson

In general, those who resort to mass murder on a collective scale always put forward the justification that they acted on behalf of the nation. — Taner Akcam

[In response to atrocities against Armenians] the British government issued a joint memo with France and Russia on 24 May 1915. The first draft, proposed by Russia, contained the phrase "crimes against Christianity and civilization," but France and Britain feared this would offend their own colonial Muslim populations and succeeded in changing the phrase to "crimes against humanity." This paved the way for the concept to assume its place after the war as one of the most important categories in international law. — Taner Akcam

The fallout caused by denial was inherited by later generations of Armenians, linking them to the fateful days of 1915, and compelling them to set the record straight. — Michael Bobelian

Alas, the twentieth century alone, in which more than 50 million people were murdered by "civilized" government decrees - during Nazi Germany, the Armenian genocide, the Soviet regime, and so on - has proved how easy it is for good people to turn mass murderers.
... This reality - the human capacity, our capacity, for evil - should not distance us from those who commit atrocities. Quite the contrary, it should remind us of a fine line: if not for some grace, there go we. — Baz Dreisinger

Speaker, with mixed emotions we mark the 50th anniversary of the Turkish genocide of the Armenian people. In taking notice of the shocking events in 1915, we observe this anniversary with sorrow in recalling the massacres of Armenians and with pride in saluting those brave patriots who survived to fight on the side of freedom during World War I. — Gerald R. Ford

Like a child in new boots leaping from puddle to puddle, this view sees history as leapfrogging from one bloodbath to the next, from World War One to World War Two to the Cold War, from the Armenian genocide to the Jewish genocide to the Rwandan genocide, from Robespierre to Lenin to Hitler. — Yuval Noah Harari

The Armenian genocide showed what could happen when empires were beaten into nations. — Niall Ferguson

The legacy of the Armenian Genocide is woven into the fabric of America. — Adam Schiff

In a report dated 20 February 1894, French ambassador Paul Cambon describes a high-ranking Turkish official telling him that "the Armenian question does not exist, but we shall create it. — Taner Akcam

It was measured that the splinters of the Armenian nation that had managed to miraculously escape the Genocide would not be able to recover from the blow, would disappear in the whirlpools on five continents, lose their national identity, and aptitude to be a political factor. But we, as a nation and as a state, were able to reappear at the international arena to affirm that we continue our eternal journey and that we are determined not to allow for such a crime to ever happen again. — Serzh Sargsyan

I am ashamed of my nation. — Djemal Pasha

But then what is the alternative to trying to tell the truth about the Holocaust, the Famine, the Armenian genocide, the injustice of dispossession in the Americas and Australia? That everyone should be reduced to silence? To pretend that the Holocaust was the work merely of a well-armed minority who didn't do as much harm as is claimed-and likewise, to argue that the Irish Famine was either an inevitability or the fault of the Irish-is to say that both were mere unreliable rumors, and not the great motors of history they so obviously proved to be. It suited me to think so at the time, but still I believe it to be true, that if there are going to be areas of history which are off-bounds, then in principle we are reduced to fudging, to cosmetic narrative. — Thomas Keneally

This was a tragic event in human history, but by paying tribute to the Armenian community we ensure the lessons of the Armenian genocide are properly understood and acknowledged. — Jerry Costello

Moreover, as the leadership of the House confirmed last year, the Administration remains opposed to a congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide due to Turkish objections. This approach sends absolutely the wrong signal to Turkey and to the rest of the world. — Patrick J. Kennedy