7 Quotes by Thomas Buergenthal

Which is better: to dare to look directly into the blinding present, no matter how painful, or to await the detachment of hindsight -- which, being less painful, is more objective?

That hope never left us, and it sustained us in the years to come, despite the fact that we had no good reason to expect our situation to improve.

If we humans can so easily wash the blood of our fellow humans off our hands, then what hope is there for sparing our future generations from a repeat of the genocides and mass killings of the past?

I doubt that we would have been able to preserve our sanity had we remained consumed by hatred for the rest of our lives. Many of our relatives and friends in America never understood what we meant when we tried to explain that, while it was important not to forget what happened to us in the Holocaust, it was equally important not to hold the descendants of the perpetrators responsible for what was done to us, lest the cycle of hate and violence never end.

Which is better: to dare to look directly into the blinding present, no matter how painful, or to await the detachment of hindsight – which, being less painful, is more objective?

It took me much longer to realize that one cannot hope to protect mankind from crimes such as those that were visited upon us unless one struggles to break the cycle of hatred and violence that invariably leads to ever more suffering by innocent human beings.

It seemed that we were condemned to be who we were, which was not a particularly good prospect.