Astrid Kirchherr Quotes

All of us, whether guilty or not, whether old or young, must accept the past. It is not a case of coming to terms with the past. That is not possible. It cannot be subsequently modified or undone.

If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future.

Poles must understand history but we must also overcome it if it is obstructing our contemporary goals.

Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.

We need to move forward and beyond the point where we endlessly pursue the demons bequeathed us by our history.

A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.

It will take 150 years or seven generations to heal the wound of the residential school.

Forgiveness is a choice, but it is not an option.

I think there are more people waiting to forgive me than I need to forgive them.

Forgiveness indeed heals memories

Guilt was its own prison.

This is our fault. My fault as much as the next man's, because even if I was against the war, I didn't do enough to stop it.

Forgiveness is the grace by which you enable the other person to get up and get up with dignity, to begin anew.

Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning.

There would never be any room in her for anything else. No room for anything but the realization of what she had done.

My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through.

Shame is always easier to handle if you have someone to share it with.

Without memory, there is no healing. Without forgiveness, there is no future.

Guilt is the most destructive of all emotions. It mourns what has been while playing no part in what may be, now or in the future.

Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.

Forgiveness is primarily for our own sake, so that we no longer carry the burden of resentment. But to forgive does not mean we will allow injustice again.

Guilt is a tireless horse. Grief ages into sorrow, and sorrow is an enduring rider.

For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them.

Remorse.-- Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.

Forgiveness leads to a shift in perception. It transforms the hurt into healing.