Quotes from The Rape of Nanking

Iris Chang ·  290 pages

Rating: (19K votes)


“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


About the author

Iris Chang
Born place: in Princeton, New Jersey, The United States
Born date March 28, 1968
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, quote from Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith


“Ich fürchtete das Schlimmste, nicht, weil ich den Plan der Griechen Zug um Zug durchschaute, sondern weil ich den haltlosen Übermut der Troer sah. Ich schrie, bat, beschwor und redete in Zungen.”
― Christa Wolf, quote from Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays


“Old and cherished ideas die hard.”
― Graham E. Fuller, quote from A World Without Islam


“She was with Jude so rarely that when she was, every cell of her body rang with grateful knowledge of it.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Landing


“He taunted me, "Pony boy, pony boy," because I liked ponies. Pony boy. He always came to vent his anger of dragons on me. They must really like us. They hide behind their Wasp Queen and pretend to hate us dragons, but in truth they love us. Why else would they bother with fucking us? That sentence probably turned you off. Thing is, I'm a very vulgar boy.

-Chance Karrucci (the Sweet Dragon)”
― L'Poni Baldwin, quote from Dragons and Cicadas: The Society On Da Run


Interesting books

Iron Lake
(12.2K)
Iron Lake
by William Kent Krueger
Embroideries
(15.5K)
Embroideries
by Marjane Satrapi
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
(25.6K)
Billy Lynn's Long Ha...
by Ben Fountain
Everyman
(13.5K)
Everyman
by Philip Roth
Music for Chameleons
(7.4K)
Music for Chameleons
by Truman Capote
Cycle of the Werewolf
(39K)
Cycle of the Werewol...
by Stephen King

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.