Torturers Quotes & Sayings

Somebody betrayed us... The Germans learned the location of our partisan troop. They surrounded the forest from all sides. We were hiding in the deep woods, hiding in the swamps where the torturers did not go [...] A radio operator was with us. She gave birth recently. The baby was hungry... Wanting the breast... But the mother is starving, she has no milk, and the baby is crying. The Germans are nearby... With dogs... If the dogs hear the baby, we're all dead. All of us - thirty people... Do you understand? We make a decision... Nobody dares to tell her the commader's order, but the mother guesses it herself. She puts the bundle with the baby into the water and holds it there for a long time... The baby does not cry... Not a sound... And we cannot lift our eyes. We cannot look at the mother or at each other — Svetlana Alexievich

Interviews, and hence interviewers, are there to help shed light, and to let viewers judge for themselves. We are not judges, juries, commentators or torturers - nor friends, either. — Andrew Marr

Where I grew up, death is a constant visitor. A virus, bacteria, a parasite; drought and famine; soldiers, and torturers; could bring it to anyone, any time. Death comes riding on raindrops that turned to floods. It catches the imagination of men in positions of authority who order their subordinates to hunt, torture, and kill people they imagine to be enemies. Death lures many others to take their own lives in order to escape a dismal reality. For many women, because of the perception of lost honor, death comes at the hands of a father, brother, or husband. Death comes to young women giving birth to new life, leaving the newborn orphaned in the hands of strangers. For those who live in anarchy and civil war, as in the country of my birth, Somalia, death is everywhere. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Naturally torturers giggle while they work: The body's dumb obedience to physics (pull hard enough and this comes off, squeeze tight enough and that pops out) against which the nuances of the victim's personality count for nothing has in it one of the roots of comedy - the spirit's subservience to the flesh. You can cut a head off and shove it in a bag, stick it on a pole, play volleyball or footie with it. Hilarious, among other things. — Glen Duncan

One of the things that sparked my interest in this is the case of Emmanuel Constant, who started a militia called FRAPH that was backed by the CIA. FRAPH killed thousands of Haitians in the early 1990s. Now while Constant is living comfortably in Queens, other Haitians are being deported. I wanted to see how those who have been bruised by people like that deal with coming face to face with their torturers. — Edwidge Danticat

I never blamed Pinochet, or my torturers, or external circumstances. — Fernando Flores

Torture is senseless violence, born in fear ... torture costs human lives but does not save them. We would almost be too lucky if these crimes were the work of savages: the truth is that torture makes torturers. — Jean-Paul Sartre

It was the fear others felt, much more than hatred or some other emotion, that had made a victim of me. It was because fear had seized some of them by the throat that I was handed over to torturers and executioners, and it was also fear that had turned those same torturers, formerly men like me, into monsters; fear that had caused the seeds of evil, which we all carry, to germinate inside them. — Philippe Claudel

Yet torture is above all an art, an artistic discipline just like literature , cinema, or contemporary dance. All detained in the City-State ghettos bitterly missed the torturers of yesteryears, those monsters who worked with the precision of a Swiss watch-maker. — Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Torture has been privatized now, so you have obviously the whole scandal in America about the abuse of prisoners and the fact that, army people might be made to pay a price, but who are the privatized torturers accountable too? — Arundhati Roy

I tremble because of the sufferings of those persecuted in different lands. I tremble thinking about the eternal destiny of their torturers. I tremble for Western Christians who don't help their persecuted brethren. In the depth of my heart, I would like to keep the beauty of my own vineyard and not be involved in such a huge fight. I would like so much to be somewhere in quietness and rest. But it is not possible ... The quietness and rest for which I long would be an escape from reality and dangerous for my soul ... The West sleeps and must be awakened to see the plight of the captive nations. — Richard Wurmbrand

In the stories after the war, all the resistance heroes were dashing, sinewy types who could construct machine guns from paperclips. And the Germans either raised their godlike blond heads through open tank hatches to watch broken cities scroll past, or else were psychopathic, sex-crazed torturers of beautiful Jewesses. Where did the boy fit in? He made such a faint presence. It was like being in the room with a feather. But his soul glowed with some fundamental kindness, didn't it? — Anthony Doerr

More terrorists are given training and sanctuary in the United States than anywhere on earth. They include mass murderers, torturers, former and future tyrants and assorted international criminals. This is virtually unknown to the American public, thanks to the freest media on earth. — John Pilger

People on the right say to people like me, Oh, you hate America. And I always say, No, I love America. I want it back. I don't want you representing it. I don't want torture representing it. If I hated it, I'd be okay with being represented by the torturers. — Bill Maher

In more than half the nations of our world, torture certifies that the form of government is tyranny. Only tyranny, no matter how camouflaged, needs and employs torturers. Torture has no ideology. — Martha Gellhorn

Oh," she said. "You can rest assured that I will kill him. Mostly this is to emphasize what I said before: no more time to lounge around and decide with no consequences. For every moment you waste deliberating today, the Oak King will be in the hands of my torturers, experiencing the most excruciating pain. Your delay extends that agony."
"Oh, irony," murmured Dorian. — Richelle Mead

When the Japanese invaded, informers said mother was an important member of the resistance. She was taken in, badly tortured and never confessed. Her life was spared because the Japanese interrogators could not believe a woman could have held such a key role.

When her children were grown-up, mother would tell us, 'It's not as bad as it sounds. The first time, you're scared you'll give away your friends. But there comes a point when you pass out. Once that happens, you cannot feel pain anymore. Once you have learnt that, you can beat your torturers. — Ang Swee Chai

It is not enough to ask, 'Will my act harm other people?' Even if the answer is No, my act may still be wrong, because of its effects on other people. I should ask, 'Will my act be one of a set of acts that will together harm other people?' The answer may be Yes. And the harm to others may be great. If this is so, I may be acting very wrongly, like the Harmless Torturers. — Derek Parfit

Facts are subversive. Subversive of the claims made by democratically elected leaders as well as dictators, by biographers and autobiographers, spies and heroes, torturers and post-modernists. Subversive of lies, half-truths, myths; of all those easy speeches that comfort cruel men. — Timothy Garton Ash

Enforced maternity brings into the world wretched infants, whom their parents will be unable to support and who will become the victims of public care or 'child martyrs'. It must be pointed out that our society, so concerned to defend the rights of the embryo, shows no interest in the children once they are born; it prosecutes the abortionists instead of undertaking to reform that scandalous institution known as 'public assistance'; those responsible for entrusting the children to their torturers are allowed to go free; society closes its eyes to the frightful tyranny of brutes in children's asylums and private foster homes. — Simone De Beauvoir

Those wounded in love, unlike those wounded in armed conflicts, are neither victims nor torturers. They chose something that is part of life, and so they must accept both the agony and the ecstasy of that choice. And those who have never been wounded by love will never be able to say: 'I have lived.' Because they haven't. — Paulo Coelho

In 2004, Jacques Derrida said that a change was under way. Torture damages the inflicter as well as the inflicted. It's no coincidence that one of the Abu Ghraib torturers came to the military directly from a job as a chicken processor. It might be slow, Derrida said, but eventually the spectacle of our abuse of animals will be intolerable to our sense of who we are. — Karen Joy Fowler

If God does not exist and there is no immortality, then all the evil acts of men go unpunished and all the sacrifices of good men go unrewarded. But who can live with such a view? Richard Wurmbrand, who has been tortured for his faith in communist prisons, says,
The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The communist torturers often said, 'There is no God, no Hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.' I have heard one torturer even say, 'I thank God, in whom I don't believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.' He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflicted on prisoners. — William Lane Craig

Life has enough torturers as it is, without you going around moonlighting as a Grand Inquisitor against yourself. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The perpetrators of the Inquisition - the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions - were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God - popes, bishops, friars, and priests. — Sam Harris

He would make me pass through the torture row so I would hear the cries and moans and the shouting of the torturers. I was blessed because the guards kept me blindfolded so I couldn't see the detainees. I was not supposed to see them, nor was I interested in seeing a brother, or actually anybody, suffering. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

E pur si muove.
(Albeit It does move.)
[What Galileo purportedly muttered after torturers forced him to recant his theory that the earth orbits the sun.] — Galileo Galilei

Sometimes, especially under severe repressive regimes, the victimized adores the torturers out of a total absence of resistance. In these sad cases, tyranny and oppression become institutional and an accepted practice in the community. As a result, anger and frustration is piled up, and will be released on the streets at the first opportunity. — Hani Soubra

What does it take to break a person?
Torturers and interrogators would be able to provide statistics. This many nights without sleep, this many needles, this much water, this voltage of current on this many occasions.
But there is considerable variation in people's ability to withstand torture. Sometimes one can achieve the desired result simply by showing the instruments and explaining what is to be done with them. Sometimes it takes weeks; one may be forced to restart a heart which has given out from the pain, and even then one may not manage to break the subject down.
However, it is presumably possible to discern some kind of average. This many needles, this many blows to the soles of the feet, before most people are sufficiently destroyed to give up what they once held most dear.
But in everyday life? — John Ajvide Lindqvist

Clearly, this is an historic form of waterboarding, and, interestingly, the professional torturers of the Inquisition were not only happy to define it as a form of torture, but by the early 1600s had abandoned it in favour of methods they 'regarded as more merciful'.46 — Robert Goodwin

Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it. — Mark Lawrence

- And what's so bad about being soft like a woman? Why is it men or whoever, some poor bastard, some queen, can't be sensitive too, if he's got a mind to?
...
- But if men acted like women there wouldn't be anymore torturers. — Manuel Puig

When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victims body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods. Once when the wind was soft and scented I heard the south calling, and sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars. — H.P. Lovecraft

[T]hat's the way of torturers of every age, to put the blame on the victim, especially when he strikes back. — Orson Scott Card

But with this woman it is as if there is no interior, only a surface across which I hunt back and forth seeking entry. Is this how her torturers felt hunting their secret, whatever they thought it was? For the first time I feel a dry pity for them: how natural a mistake to believe that you can burn or tear or hack your way into the secret body of the other! The girl lies in my bed, but there is no good reason why it should be a bed. I behave in some ways like a lover - I undress her, I bathe her, I stroke her, I sleep beside her - but I might equally well tie her to a chair and beat her, it would be no less intimate. — J.M. Coetzee

A world without God to give people faith that all their suffering is not meaningless is a nightmare. A world without religion means a world without any systematic way of ennobling people. A world without countries is a world without the United States of America, and it is a world governed by the amoral United Nations, where mass murderers sit on "human rights" councils. A world without heaven or hell is a world without any ultimate justice, where torturers and their victims have identical fates. A world without possessions is a world in which some enormous state possesses everything, and the individual is reduced to the status of a well-fed serf. Liberals frequently criticize conservatives for fearing change. What we fear is transforming that which is already good. The moral record of humanity does not fill us with optimism about "fundamentally transforming" something as rare as America. Evil is normal. America is not. — Dennis Prager

The Communist torturers often said, 'There is no God, no hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.' I have heard one torturer even say, 'I thank God, in whom I don't believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.' He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflected on prisoners. — Richard Wurmbrand

She thought she was brave, but she did not have that kind of courage. To face the men who controlled the torturers, the lists, the surveillance, and say: I am going to do the very thing you say I must not do.
And yet they were right.How were things to get better if no one fought? — Geoff Ryman

Forced motherhood results in bringing miserable children into the world, children whose parents cannot feed them, who become victims of public assistance or "martyr children." It must be pointed out that the same society so determined to defend the rights of the fetus shows no interest in children after they are born; instead of trying to reform this scandalous institution called public assistance, society prosecutes abortionists; those responsible for delivering orphans to torturers are left free; society closes its eyes to the horrible tyranny practiced in "reform schools" or in the private homes of child abusers; and while it refuses to accept that the fetus belongs to the mother carrying it, it nevertheless agrees that the child is his parents' thing. — Simone De Beauvoir

But why?" Gabriel asks. "Why do they wish to cause such pain to another human?"
"Why does the Spanish Inquisition do what it does?" I ask. "Why does our own Church burn witches at the stake? Why did our own crusaders punish the Moors so exquisitely?"
Gabriel thinks about this. He knows I don't beg answers for these questions.
"Of course it's easy to say that we mete out punishment to those who are an abomination in God's eyes," I say. "But it's more than that, isn't it? I think we don't just allow torturers but condone them as a way to excise the fear we all have of death. To torture someone is to take control of death, to be the master of it, even for a short time. — Joseph Boyden

In February 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti - France and the United States - combined to back a military coup and send President Aristide off to Africa. The U.S. denies him permission to return to the entire region. — Noam Chomsky

That's what torture does: it creates a miasma of unknowing, about as dangerous a situation in wartime as one can imagine. This hideous fate was made possible by an inexperienced president with a fundamentalist psyche and a paranoid and power-hungry vice-president who decided to embrace "the dark side" almost as soon as the second tower fell, and who is still trying to avenge Nixon. Until they are both gone from office, we are in grave danger the kind of danger that only torturers and fantasists and a security strategy based on coerced evidence can conjure up. — Andrew Sullivan

Master Palaemon's hand, dry and wrinkled as a mummy's, groped until it found mine. "Among the initiates of religion it is said, 'You are an epopt always.' The reference is not only to knowledge but to their chrism, whose mark, being invisible, is ineradicable. You know our chrism."
I nodded again.
"Less even than theirs can it be washed away. Should you leave now, men will only say, 'He was nurtured by the torturers.' But when you have been anointed they will say, 'He is a torturer.' You may follow the plow or the drum, but still you will hear, 'He is a torturer.' Do you understand that? — Gene Wolfe

The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers. — Carl Jung

A man of true faith should never kill for his belief, but he should certainly be willing to die for it. That's what set Jesus apart. He loved His oppressors, prayed for His detractors, forgave His torturers, and died for His enemies. If there's ever been a real God on earth, my money is on Jesus of Nazareth. — Jared Brock

Only parents and torturers and the janitors of holocausts are asked to stand the sound of so much human grief. — Martin Amis

The sun is all love and murder, judgement, the perpetual raid of conscience, paratrooping light which opens like a snow-blossom in the downward drift of death. Wherever I turn - the golden cymbals of judgement, the summoning of the torturers of light. — Janet Frame

The friends of Job appear on the scene as advisers and "consolers," offering Job the fruits of their moral scientia. But when Job insists that his sufferings have no explanation and that he cannot discover the reason for them through conventional ethical concepts, his friends turn into accusers, and curse Job as a sinner. Thus, instead of consolers, they become torturers by virtue of their very morality, and in so doing, while claiming to be advocates of God, they act as instruments of the devil. — Thomas Merton

People are surprised by how upset they get in this theater of distress. And then they get upset that they are upset. They often try to reassure themselves, saying things like, "Chill, chill, it's only a toy!" They are experiencing something new: you can feel bad about yourself for how you behave with a computer program. Adults come to the upside-down test knowing two things: the Furby is a machine and they are not torturers. By the end, with a whimpering Furby in tow, they are on new ethical terrain. — Sherry Turkle

Normally it's the tortured who turn the tables on the unsuspecting and become the torturers. Tortured or not, you've got talent in this area. No wonder you're a Dom.
Jaxx Gavin to her hero Aries Taylor in Stare Me Dwon — Riley Murphy

The entire affective world, constructed over the years with utmost difficulty, collapses with a kick in the father's genitals, a smack on the mother's face, an obscene insult to the sister, or the sexual violation of a daughter. Suddenly an entire culture based on familial love, devotion, the capacity for mutual sacrifice collapses. Nothing is possible in such a universe, and that is precisely what the torturers know ... From my cell, I'd hear the whispered voices of children trying to learn what was happening to their parents, and I'd witness the efforts of daughters to win over a guard, to arouse a feeling of tenderness in him, to incite the hope of some lovely future relationship between them in order to learn what was happening to her mother, to get an orange sent to her, to get permission for her to go to the bathroom. — Jacobo Timerman

So we know that human nature, and that includes our nature, yours and mine, can very easily turn people into quite efficient torturers and mass-murderers and slave-drivers...To the extent that the statement is true, and there is such an extent, it's just not relevant: human nature also has the capacity to lead to selflessness, and cooperation, and sacrifice, and support, and solidarity, and tremendous courage, and lots of other things too. — Noam Chomsky

It's often said that cowards make the best torturers. Cowards have good imaginations, imaginations that torment them with all the worst stuff of nightmare, all the horrors that could befall them. This provides an excellent arsenal when it comes to inflicting misery on others. And their final qualification is that they understand the fears of their victim better than the victim does himself. — Mark Lawrence