Pol Pot Quotes

Brother Number Two

People of my generation did not like very much to tell what we lived through during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Pol Pot will surrender, be captured or commit suicide.

Pol Pot carried out through the years enormous purges against his own followers because of his paranoia.

Going to Cambodia to cover the genocide trials, I did read a lot about the Khmer Rouge; I read a lot about the country and its history.

Operating from 1975 to 1979, S-21 became the most infamous of 196 such prison camps the Khmer Rouge established throughout Cambodia, primarily because so many of its prisoners were the purged party loyal - and because Duch's methods were so stunningly brutal.

What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot completed.

I'm quite satisfied on one thing: If we had not carried out our struggle, Cambodia would have become another Kampuchea Krom in 1975.

Millions also perished in the Chinese camps, and there have been terrible genocides in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Pol Pot is very charming. ... His face, his behavior is very polite, but he is very, very cruel. Pol Pot does not believe in God but he thinks that heaven, destiny, wants him to guide Cambodia in the way he thinks it the best for Cambodia, that is to say, the worst. Pol Pot is mad, you know, like Hitler.

Exterminate the 50 million Vietnamese... and purify the masses of the [Cambodian] people.

My second TV assignment ever was to go to Cambodia to look at the state of the country in the dying days of the Khmer Rouge. I was naive, awkward, and not very good at writing to pictures.

Pol Pot - he rounded up anybody he thought was intellectual and had them executed. And how he told someone was intellectual or not was whether they wore glasses. If they're that clever, take them off when they see him coming!

My own reaction from a distance is that Pol Pot's demise as the leader of the Khmer Rouge was inevitable, and that his own paranoia did him in as much as anything else.

I would like to avail myself of this opportunity to express my deepest respect to the souls of our innocent countrymen, who were victims of the killings and heinous acts during the Democratic Kampuchea regime. To those who lost their loved ones to the regime, I am sorry. It was my fault to be too foolish, and failed to keep up with the real situation. I tried my best for the sake of our nation’s survival, so that we might enjoy development and prosperity like other nations. I am so surprised that this turned out to be mass murder.

De Gaulle has all the characteristics to be a dictator.

I'm a big admirer of S21, and I really also like Rithy Panh's work in general.

He [Hitler] is a very great man. "Fuhrer" is the proper name for him, for he is a born leader, yes, and statesman.

Although some people felt Adolf Hitler was bad, he was a great man and a real conqueror whose name would never be forgotten.

There are African leaders who have the dangerous habit of leading their people into an abyss. In Rwanda we've had presidents who killed. The one million people who died here were, to a certain extent, victims of their leader, President Juvénal Habyarimana, who died in a plane crash before the genocide began. He contributed to all that. The man who took over from him was running around ordering people to kill. If this president came back and landed in my hands, I would have him arrested and tried. Unfortunately, he died a natural death.

You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don't care for him.

The enslavement, humiliation, torture, and ultimate destruction of thousands upon thousands of human beings for a project for which there was ultimately no purpose is a horror that's very hard to imagine, far less understand.

I first interviewed Fidel Castro 39 years ago. He was charming and fiercely guarded about his private life. He called our interviews 'fiery debates.' During our times together, he made clear to me that he was an absolute dictator and that he was a staunch opponent of democracy.

Kim Jong Il made his staff call him “dear” and spent the day drinking cognac. It's like I have a twin, ladies and gentlemen.

His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.