Jaime Harrison Quotes

The history of our country is cruel. We have to face those issues or, should I say, we had to. Not anymore I hope, because we are going in the right direction, and we are ready to forgive, ready to move on.

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

There were exceptions, a couple of families that just plain didn't want to even think about it, although forty years had passed but mostly the people were very interested in talking about it.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

I have always felt that this story is universal. When I began to understand the details of the history, I felt that the most compelling aspect was not what happened, but what continues to happen and how it is denied.

I am not very moved by historical apologies.

Reconciliation does not mean covering history with a blanket. Reconciliation means truth, justice and love. Justice without love can degenerate into vengeance. We need to know the truth for medicinal reasons, so that what happened … will never happen again.

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

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

Germans have an understanding of history and cannot allow themselves to forget it. It may be a curse, but in some ways, it's a blessing. It makes them cautious.

History is with us until we learn from the suffering of the past.

We [Americans] have a historical trauma when it comes to the past relationships when it comes to Native Americans and the history of how America was created. With this film, it's nice to see that the trauma is presented from a white male that was in the Civil War and that trauma affects him in a way that still exists.

We have learned the lines of good taste through history and our sense of guilt, be it post-colonial or post-Holocaust.

After voluntary exertions on the part of our people to which the history of the world furnishes no parallel, is the old root of bitterness still to remain in the ground, to sprout and bear fruit in the future as it has borne fruit in the past?

'Memory.' 'Race.' 'Murder.' That's what they say about me. I am an elegiac poet. I have some historical questions, and I'm grappling with ways to make sense of history; why it still haunts us in our most intimate relationships with each other, but also in our political decisions.

If women really want equality, we have to wipe the slate clean. It no longer matters in the largest sense what men did to us for the last 200 or 300 years.

Three years ago the Government announced the creation of Reconciliation Place, and said that it would include a memorial to those removed from their families. However, they refused to include any of those who were removed in the design of their own memorial.

I'm going to be looking forward, asked to be judged on my record, not taken back as has been the - in a sense, the tendency throughout politics in Northern Ireland, is to always look back, always look at what was said a long time ago, instead of looking forward.

The Rwandan policy of putting the genocide behind them is incredibly effective in many ways. But it's also incredibly frightening to think that this nation is being asked put this mass slaughter behind them.

And it seems to me important for a country, for a nation to certainly know about its glorious achievements but also to know where its ideals failed, in order to keep that from happening again.

In this room we're all here together, but there's probably a lot of different views, people sitting here thinking, I don't own any slaves, all the slaves are dead. Why am I responsible? My family were immigrants, too.

This agency participated in the ethnic cleansing that befell the Western tribes …. By accepting the legacy we accept the moral responsibility of putting things right.

History is the most dangerous substance that the chemistry of the intellect has created…. I makes men dream, intoxicates them, breeds false memories in them, aggravates their responses, takes up their ancient grievances, torments them in their sleep, carries them into the delirium of grandeur or else of persecution, and turns nations bitter, intolerable, and vain.

What kind of country are we that our history is so tragic?

You cannot turn the clock back, you cannot give the island of Manhattan back to the indigenous, but on the other hand, you can ensure that the indigenous can maintain their way of life.