Aleksander Kwasniewski Quotes

As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

We can only judge what is right and proper by our own standards of right and wrong, which differs widely from the whites if I have been properly informed. The whites may do wrong all their lives, and then if they are sorry for it when they die, all is well, but with us it is different. We must continue to do good throughout our lives ... If the Great Spirit wished us to believe and do as the whites, He could easily change our opinions so that we could see, think, and act as they do... I believe that every man must make his own path.

I don't believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

Sin with the multitude, and your responsibility and guilt are as great and as truly personal, as if you alone had done the wrong

The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them.

Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members (e.g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in his public violation of justice.

If somebody murders somewhere, I have a part in it. Even if I am a sleeper - I was sleeping, I don´t know about the man, I will never hear about him - and somebody somewhere, in the Himalayas, commits a murder, if we are not individuals I have a part in it, I am also responsible. It is not so easy to throw the responsibility: "I am not committing a murder, I am a saint." No saint is a saint because every sinner is implied in him.

Where is my guilt? I can regret. I can regret that I made the party film, 'Triumph of the Will,' in 1934. But I cannot regret that I lived in that time. No anti-Semitic word has ever crossed my lips. I was never anti-Semitic. I did not join the party. So where then is my guilt? You tell me. I have thrown no atomic bombs. I have never betrayed anyone. What am I guilty of?

[James] Baldwin explained that you have your own history, and that you cannot be responsible, for example, for slavery.

I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.

It is true that all of us are the beneficiaries of crimes committed by our ancestors, and it is true that nothing can be done about that now because the victims are dead and the survivors are innocent. These are good reasons for keeping our mouths shut about the past: but tell me, what are our reasons for silence about atrocities still to come?

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart.

There is too much at stake to worry about our own egos. When my son was killed, I had to face the fact that I was somehow also responsible for what happened. Every American that allows this to continue has, to some extent, blood on their hands. Some of us have a little bit, and some of us are soaked in it.

I do not believe in collective guilt.

Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?

Only individuals have a sense of responsibility.

The historic idea that the devil tempts men had this remarkable effect, it produced the man of iron who fought; the modern idea of blaming his heredity or his circumstances produces the man who gives in at once.

If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn't be where we are now.

For the Christian there can be no social or political panaceas, no easy escapes from personal responsibility achieved by collectivising guilt or virtue. The true ends of temporal life lie beyond it, and, though the tyrannical State may diminish virtue, the benevolent State cannot procure it.

The fault is as great as hee that is faulty.

All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America; in doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichman chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows?

I don't believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled long ago!.

To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation.

To punish the individual for the sins of the system makes no sense. We're responsible for changing it, yes. But we can't actually invent another universe, so we have to start where we are.