TORTURE QUOTES
quotations about torture
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
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them.
BARACK OBAMA
press release, "Torture and Secrecy Betray Core American Values", 2007
There is no known instance of torture preventing a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack, though the practice has been perpetrated throughout human history. One needn't summon any particular degree of insight or wisdom to see that if the Trump administration chooses to torture, it will inevitably be used in the absence of a ticking time bomb, on prisoners with no information that would save city blocks from WMDs. That's precisely what happened during the Bush administration.
CONOR FRIEDERSDORF
"The Case for Bringing Back Torture Is a Ticking Time-Bomb", The Atlantic, December 12, 2016
Torture is a certain method for the acquittal of robust villains and for the condemnation of innocent but feeble men.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
"Discipline and Punish", The Phenomenon of Torture: Readings and Commentary
Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
Oceana
I said there were two questions: Was torture moral, ethical and legal? Did torture work? The CIA has said for years that it worked. That was a lie. It was never moral, ethical or legal.
JOHN KIRIAKOU
"John Kiriakou: The ex-CIA officer turned whistle-blower", Aljazeera, May 3, 2017
Torture is senseless violence, born in fear.... We would almost be too lucky if these crimes were the work of savages: the truth is that torture makes torturers.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
"A Victory"
The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word--these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they're the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives, are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.
ANTONIN SCALIA
citing the television show 24 to support torture, Last Week Tonight, June 15, 2015
Any further discussion of torture should be unnecessary. However, since our national media seems to be enthusiastically pimping depravity as a governing principle, we might as well point out that the guys that have been there, done that, seen the elephant show and lived to come home? They say it doesn't work, isn't worth it, and they want nothing to do with it.
MARK SUMNER
"Torture: This shouldn't need to be said", Daily Kos, May 23, 2009
Torture is a poor support for any theology.
JOHN FELLOWS
attributed, Day's Collacon
If, it was natural to reason, God punishes men with eternal torment, it is surely lawful for men to use doses of it in a good cause.
JOSEPH MCCABE
A History of Torture
Once you have been tortured, you can never belong in this world. There is no place that can ever be your home.
ROMA TEARNE
Mosquito
Torturing the terrorist is unconstitutional? Probably. But millions of lives surely outweigh constitutionality. Torture is barbaric? Mass murder is far more barbaric. Indeed, letting millions of innocents die in deference to one who flaunts his guilt is moral cowardice, an unwillingness to dirty one's hands. If you caught the terrorist, could you sleep nights knowing that millions died because you couldn't bring yourself to apply the electrodes?
MICHAEL LEVIN
"The Case for Torture", The Phenomenon of Torture: Readings and Commentary
Favoring the use of torture is not a political position, it's a mental illness.
MARK SUMNER
"Torture: This shouldn't need to be said", Daily Kos, May 23, 2009
My torturers still come to me from time to time. I can still smell them. But they are less and less the reason why that razor blade comes to mind--the reason why I need its protection. Increasingly it is because of the leaders of my own government and the torture they so arrogantly preside over, for I have not told you all that died with my torture and its aftermath. The connection between my own government and justice was torn asunder, and remains so today. Certainly nothing the present administration is doing will alter this situation. Shall I, shall we, who have been tortured put our trust in the law when we are told the president is superior to law? Apparently the president can do what he wants in the name of protecting us from terrorism. He can torture to protect us from terrorism. But torture is a form of terrorism! Where is the law, international or otherwise, to protect us from our own government's practice of terrorism?
DIANNA ORTIZ
"A Survivor's View of Torture", Torture Is a Moral Issue: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and People of Conscience Speak Out
Torture and abuse cost American lives... I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq... How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.
MATTHEW ALEXANDER
leader of an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006, "I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq", Washington Post, November 30, 2008
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
"Imaginationland", The Daily Dish, October 25, 2007
Barbarians consider endurance of torture an evidence of superiority.
E. P. DAY
Day's Collacon
We tortured some folks.... We did some things that were contrary to our values. I understand why it happened. I think it's important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell, and the Pentagon had been hit, and a plane in Pennsylvania had fallen and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this.
BARACK OBAMA
press conference, August 1, 2014