“As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.”
― Iris Chang, quote from The Rape of Nanking
“Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.”
― Iris Chang, quote from The Rape of Nanking
“The Rape of Nanking did not penetrate the world consciousness in the same manner as the Holocaust or Hiroshima because the victims themselves had remained silent.”
― Iris Chang, quote from The Rape of Nanking
“Looking back upon millennia of history, it appears clear that no race or culture has monopoly on wartime cruelty. The veneer of civilization seems to be exceedingly thin – one that can be easily stripped away, especially by the stresses of war.”
― Iris Chang, quote from The Rape of Nanking
“The heroic efforts of the Americans and Europeans during this period are so numerous (their diaries run for thousands of pages) that it is impossible to narrate all of their deeds here.”
― Iris Chang, quote from The Rape of Nanking
“In 1996 I began an investigation into the life of John Rabe and eventually unearthed thousands of pages of diaries that he and other Nazis kept during the Rape. These diaries led me to conclude that John Rabe was “the Oskar Schindler of China.”
― Iris Chang, quote from The Rape of Nanking
“Perhaps the most fascinating character to emerge from the history of the Rape of Nanking is the German businessman John Rabe. To most of the Chinese in the city, he was a hero, “the living Buddha of Nanking,” the legendary head of the International Safety Zone who saved hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives.”
― Iris Chang, quote from The Rape of Nanking
“Every motion she made was slow, as if she’d never before put her arms around a man, and didn’t know for certain where everything fit. When at last they were pressed close, she didn’t think she’d know how to let go when the time came. They summarized the course of passion with kisses: a chaste, half-frightened brush of the lips metamorphosed into something fierce and fast-burning, which in its turn became a more patient, more intimate touch, full of inquiry and shared pleasure.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks
“thither write, my queen,
And with mine eyes I'll drink the words you send
Though ink be made of gall.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from Cymbeline
“One day might be different from another, but there ain't much difference when they're put together.
September 14, 1911: Writer and teacher William Armstrong wrote celebrated children's books including the Newbery Medal-winning Sounder, about an African American sharecropper family with a loud and loyal hound, inspired by Odysseus' dog Argus. Armstrong was born in Virginia 102 years ago today.”
― William H. Armstrong, quote from Sounder
“We do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises. To understand this is to realize that we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose.”
― Sam Harris, quote from Free Will
“But how can we know that dragons did not exist? We have never actually BEEN to the Dark Ages.”
― Cressida Cowell, quote from A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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