Henry A. Kissinger Quotes

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?

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.

One culture I find fascinating to juxtapose against American culture is the culture of Germany. They've gone through a long process through their art, poetry, public discourse, their politics, of owning the fact of their complicity in what happened in World War II. It's still a topic of everyday conversation in Germany.

I'm ashamed to be German.

If the Barbarians are destroyed, who will we then be able to blame for the bad things?

Every man is responsible only for his own acts. The sons do not inherit the sins of the fathers. But can we say: that was long ago, they were different?

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

It wouldn't be fair to cast aspersions on an entire cultural movement based on the actions of a few. To quote my grandfather, 'One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch.'

Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.

Slavery is something that is all too often swept under the carpet. The shame doesn't even belong to us, but we still experience it because we're a part of the African race. If it happened to one, it happened to all. We carry that burden.

We know that we are not collectively guilty, so how can we accuse any other nation, no matter what some of its people have done, of being collectively guilty?

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

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

It seems eternally forgotten, that men, in their collective capacity as nations, may be, and often are, guilty of the same follies, faults, and crimes, that they can commit as individuals in the common relations of social life; that they may be just as ill-humored, or resentful, or unreasonable, or ferocious, or wicked; that their good or bad passions enter with them into cabinets, and senates, and public meetings, just as they do into drawing-rooms, or studies, or their family dining-rooms.

When we blame all Muslims, all Syrians, or all members of any other group because of the actions of individuals, we fall into the trap of asserting collective guilt. We empower the narrow-minded ideology that we are trying to defeat.

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

To what extent has each one of us contributed to the rise in violence and hatred?

Each person must ask what his relationship is to the scapegoat. I am not aware of my own, and I am persuaded that the same holds true for my readers. We only have legitimate enmities. And yet the entire universe swarms with scapegoats.

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

Sometimes we say we want an end to hate or racism or sexism. But we all participate in keeping these structures alive. If everyone decided to relinquish the past what would happen to people who feel that there hasn't been proper atonement made to them? And what happens to the person who feels that the constant atonement is their identity?

The children of Birmingham did not really die in the State of Alabama, however, because Alabama is a state of mind, and in the minds of the [white] men who rule Alabama, those children had never lived [...] their blood is on so many hands, that history will weep in the telling...and it is not new blood. It is old, so very old.

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.

The horror of our history has purged me of opinions.

When looking at Germans, I have never felt a sense that they are guilty. I have encountered anti-Semitism in the United States as well.

There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will see at once that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things.