Collective Trauma Quotes

There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.

The effect of AIDS was like a war in a minute country. Like, in World War I, a whole generation of Englishmen died all at once. And with AIDS, a whole generation of gay men died practically all at once, within a couple of years.

Viewing Israelis and Palestinians from a psychological perspective, they would both be seen as victims of abuse; that is how they both understandably feel, and it's how they both understandably behave. The Jewish psyche is in victimized reaction to the Holocaust, and the Palestinian psyche is in victimized reaction to the Israelis.

One death to a man is a serious thing: a dozen neutralize one another.

Racism has been for everyone like a horrible, tragic car crash, and we've all been heavily sedated from it. If we don't come into consciousness of this tragedy, there's going to be a violent awakening we don't want. The question is, can we wake up?

I didn't realise the depth of horror that happened in the Second World War every day.

If I told you the whole story it would never end...What's happened to me has happened to a thousand woman.

My father's family were liquidated during the Cultural Revolution in China because they were landowners. He was the only one to escape. I was born and brought up in Taiwan. But you absorb the trauma. My parents had no sense of security.

There's a numbness in our culture to the continuing horrors of genocide.

After the war [WW I], the soul of the people will be so maimed and so injured that it is horrible to think of.

You don't like dealing with somebody who denies horrible things happening to your people or threatens future horrible things to your people.

To hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we 'know' that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined.

The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes.

We want to take the energy surrounding the Sandy Hook anniversary that might otherwise be consumed by grief or anger - or this week in San Bernardino by fear - and channel some of that to honor our common humanity and love each other.

Every woman who thinks she is the only victim of violence has to know that there are many more.

Nearly all Americans felt they knew JFK intimately, his charm and wit regularly lighting up the television screen at home. This is why polls showed that millions of Americans took his assassination like a 'death in the family.'

I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say: September 11th we are all Americans - in grief, as in defiance.

After doing this work or the past twelve years and watching scarcity ride roughshod over our families, organizations, and communities, I'd say the one thing we have in common is that we're sick of feeling afraid. we want to dare greatly. We're tired of the national conversation centering on "What should we fear" and "Who should we blame?" We all want to be brave.

May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independent of experience, are the inherited effects of real dangers and abject superstitions during ancient savage times?

I think attacks on civilians in fact boost morale.

The Holocaust story has been told and retold so many times.

In the name of Jerusalem. If I forget the extermination of the Jews, may my right hand wither, may my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you, if I do not keep the extermination of the Jews in memory even at my happiest hour.

The bitter and agonizing fruit from the tree of nationality…

If I never do anything else in this career as a member of Congress, I'm gonna make somebody pay for what they've done to my community and to my people!

Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.