William Saroyan Quotes

The truly just is he who feels half guilty of your misdeeds.

I can't judge the way other people behave. I can only look at myself.

It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. For we are all tarred with the same brush and are children of one and the same Creator.

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?

Everyone performs bad actions... A bad person is someone who does not lament his bad actions.

We are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves.

I am ashamed to be a member of the human race but I don't want to add any more to that shame, I want to scrape a little of it off.

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.

We are all human beings, immigrant or non-immigrant. We all feel fear. We all love and become confused when we don't act as well as we would like to. We all get depressed and have feelings of uselessness. All of these things are true and have always been true.

I have never met a person in whom I did not see myself reflected.

My mom can't defend herself to the world. She is such an amazing woman, with such an open heart. It's a real hard line, and I crossed it. I took everyone's life story and assumed it would be a great thing to put on screen. I was being selfish and I feel so horrible about it. I feel so guilty.

Evil is important for us to look at, in my opinion, only insofar as it makes us look at our own actions and make us wonder, 'Am I participating in some kind of human evil that I really should stop doing?'

My conscience is clear.

Every nation, like every individual, would like to believe it owes 'no apology' to anyone. Adults realise, however, that few among us are purely innocent or utterly blameless.

The eye of God ends up inside, so that, in the end, you take care of judgment and punishment yourself.

I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem a matter of indifference to me.

I think guilt is directional. You should get rid of it, but the way to get rid of it is not to get rid of the guilt feelings. It is to get rid of the wrong that you did that caused the guilt feelings.

As somebody once said, we're not punished for our sins, we're punished by them.

Whether or not one has won the Nobel Prize, each of us living in contact with our fellowmen feels a joint responsibility for all forms of suffering, both physical and moral.

'Ida' is about humanity, about guilt and forgiveness. It's not a film that deals with an issue as such. It's more universal.

In truth, there is no such thing as a "sinner" for no-one can be sinned against-least of all me.

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

God will judge us by our own thoughts and deeds, not by what others say about us.

When thou art offended at any man's fault, forthwith turn to thyself and reflect in what manner thou doest error thyself. For by attending to this thou wilt quickly forget thy anger, if this consideration is also added, that the man is compelled; for what else could he do? or, if thou art able, take away from him the compulsion.

Only the guilty are guilty: the children of killers are not killers, but children.