Simon Wiesenthal Quotes

Forbear to lay the guilt of a few on the many.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

We must differentiate between guilt and duty. The soldier on the front, like the common man, who does his duty everywhere, should not be held responsible for the actions of a few who also called themselves Germans.

We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom." It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from 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

If the victims are my problem, the killers are yours.

I do not believe in collective guilt.

The fault is as great as hee that is faulty.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

Guilt -- if there was any guilt -- spread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything. . . . Perhaps at some point in time, at some spot in the world, a moment of responsibility existed.

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 responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible.

Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.

But I don't believe in guilt by association.

To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know.

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.

Do not you know that people's sin fall upon the prince, and the prince's sin falls upon the people?

No member of any 'grouping' should be judged by the activity of some other individual in that same grouping.

What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does is thrown back at all Jews.

In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty - all are responsible.

...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility

It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one's acts.

I cannot shift the blame for Chechnya, for the sorrow of numerous mothers and fathers. I made the decision, therefore I am responsible.

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.