Collective Guilt Quotes

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future. We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.

Talking about [Donald] Trump, there's nothing wrong with Trump. He's who he is. It's wrong with us, who let him [win]. That's what's wrong. It's not that he's going to change, but the people who think like him.

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.

Anyone who wants reparations based on history will have to gerrymander history very carefully. Otherwise, practically everybody would owe reparations to practically everybody else.

Perhaps some day someone will explain how, on the level of man, Auschwitz was possible; but on the level of God, it will forever remain the most disturbing of mysteries.

I know but one code of morality for man whether acting singly or collectively. He who says I will be a rogue when I act in company with a hundred others, but an honest man when I act alone, will be believed in the former assertion, but not in the latter.

Only individuals have a sense of responsibility.

The moral man is as guilty as the rest. His morality cannot save him.

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

Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.

The thing about watching a show about the Iraq war, especially for an American audience, is that it reminds them they're responsible in some way.

The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all.

When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him.

He could have a thousand faults, but I do not blame anyone in particular and I despise brutality with which the Nazis acted against Israelites; but the fault is not only of Hitler, but a group of high-ranked dignitaries.

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

Many people in Hungary acted shamefully during World War II.

Judaism will be enmeshed in pride and shame for as long as it endures. But to endure as a country, Israel must shun both these tendencies.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

Every civilian's death diminishes us, collectively.

I have tried to keep memory alive... I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

The question is not what the Germans did to the Jews, but what the Jews did to the Germans.

If... if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! ........... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.

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?

The classical case is that of the starving man who steals a loaf of bread. That he should be allowed to go free is understandable enough; but it is less understandable that 'society's' obligation not to let him starve should devolve upon one baker chosen at random and not on society as a whole.