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P Quotes

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All P Quotes

“People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla […], I went to […] check in with Los Madres: the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. (‘Todo mi familia!’ as one elderly lady kept telling me imploringly, as she flourished their photographs. ‘Todo mi familia!’) From these and from other relatives and friends I got a line of questioning to put to the general. I would be told by him, they forewarned me, that people ‘disappeared’ all the time, either because of traffic accidents and family quarrels or, in the dire civil-war circumstances of Argentina, because of the wish to drop out of a gang and the need to avoid one’s former associates. But this was a cover story. Most of those who disappeared were openly taken away in the unmarked Ford Falcon cars of the Buenos Aires military police. I should inquire of the general what precisely had happened to Claudia Inez Grumberg, a paraplegic who was unable to move on her own but who had last been seen in the hands of his ever-vigilant armed forces [….] I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer, as if to illustrate some seminar on the banality of evil. Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush. I am gripping his hand in a much too unctuous manner and smiling as if genuinely delighted at the introduction. Aching to expunge this humiliation, I waited while he went almost pedantically through the predicted script, waving away the rumored but doubtless regrettable dematerializations that were said to be afflicting his fellow Argentines. And then I asked him about Senorita Grumberg. He replied that if what I had said was true, then I should remember that ‘terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas. Maybe that’s why she’s detained.’ I expressed astonishment at this reply and, evidently thinking that I hadn’t understood him the first time, Videla enlarged on the theme. ‘We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.’ Behind him, I could see one or two of his brighter staff officers looking at me with stark hostility as they realized that the general—El Presidente—had made a mistake by speaking so candidly. […] In response to a follow-up question, Videla crassly denied—‘rotondamente’: ‘roundly’ denied—holding Jacobo Timerman ‘as either a journalist or a Jew.’ While we were having this surreal exchange, here is what Timerman was being told by his taunting tormentors: Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space. […] We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as ‘evidence’ by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there’s the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of… we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it’s one, two, three… go!”

ChristianityArgentinaEinsteinFreudMarxJorge Rafael VidelaDeath SquadsJacobo Timerman
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“People standing up and saying, 'This isn't right,' is certainly a quality I admire in specific circumstances. There are people who do that and have a different set of politics, and then I don't necessarily agree with what they're doing and why they're doing it. But the act in and of itself of saying something is wrong and standing up for what they think is right is something I generally admire.”

PeopleThinkingDifferentQualityCircumstancesAgreeAdmire
Author:Rory Kennedy
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“People start political parties not to address the issues and service delivery we are facing, but to exploit taxpayers' money. That's why we have more than 50 political parties, yet no single issue people are facing is resolved. These parties celebrate anniversaries yearly, while what is broken in society remains broken, and even more issues arise. People start political parties to represent themselves, not the people or society. They start these political parties to scam the government. That's why, when they get into parliament, they don't understand service delivery and don't want to know or provide it. They care more about themselves than others.”

Quotes Or PhilosophyCorruption Or CrimeLaw Or OrderGovernment Or CitizensService Delivery Or ServicePolitics Or Political Parties
Author:De philosopher DJ Kyos
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“People stay all the time where we know they should not. Even more, they stay where THEY know they should not. Against reason. At the risk of their bodies. At the risk of their sovereignty. At the risk of their heart. We humans are nothing if not tenaciously obtuse in the face of a story that wants to end itself.”

BreakupsBreakup QuotesToxic RelationshipsEndingsToxic RelationshipLeaving A RelationshipToxic Relationship LoveToxic Relationship Quotes
Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
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“People stick hearts on Valentine's cards and get married in white dresses and give each other flowers. They think love is every-thing going right. That's not love. That's self-indulgence. That's good luck. Love is when you walk into the burning building. Love is when the person who means most to you in the world is breathing through a mask and pissing in a bag. Love is when they no longer know your name.”

LovePainHurtSelf IndulgenceValentines
Author:Mark Haddon
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“People still get shot because of their color - people still get mistrusted because of their religion - people still get sneered at because of their gender and sexuality. Does this look like a civilized world? We may have the tangible brain capacity to build a civilized world, but we are not there yet, and we are not going to reach that destination any time soon. However, the work must begin now.”

AcceptanceRacismPrejudiceBlack Lives MatterGender EqualityHate CrimeHomophobiaReligious HarmonySystemic RacismIslamophobia
Author:Abhijit Naskar
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