Truth and Reconciliation Quotes

South Africans must recall the terrible past so that we can deal with it, forgiving where forgiveness is necessary but never forgetting.

It’s no coincidence that these land acknowledgments are proliferating at formal ceremonies, even as such patriotic rituals as the Pledge of Allegiance and the playing of the national anthem are under attack. They replace a concise affirmation of national pride with a dense confession of national original sin.

I’m Armenian, and April 24th was another commemoration of the genocide of Armenia people by Turkey. The perpetrator never admitted the crime. I was raised with that, this question: how do you actually find the truth of such a traumatic event? I'm obsessed with that issue.

One of the emphases of the new democratic order is no impunity.

A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay.

The goal of pursuit of justice must not simply be that justice happens but that reconciliation also happens.

Acknowledgment of torture is not accountability for it.

The commission had to subpoena the F.A.A. for documents, had to subpoena NORAD for documents and they will never get the full story. That is one of the tragedies. One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up.

The Holocaust of Nazi Germany is certainly no less of a historic crime than the Holocaust that went on for centuries against African-Americans. That process of reparations, and a truth and reconciliation discussion, was extremely helpful in the country of Germany, and we need to have that here.

There can be no healing without truth.

I have lived with my conscience and my own memories for over quarter of a century since the events of 1973. These are not easy reflections for me. But I am at peace with myself, and with the Chilean people, about what happened. I am clear in my mind that the return to Chile of true democracy, and from that the true freedom to which all individual people are entitled, could not have been achieved without the removal of the Marxist government.

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

I think that for many of us, the years of the Civil Rights movements - Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy running for president in 1968 to end the war and so forth - these were defining moment in terms of trying to hold government accountable and have a level of responsibility and truth-telling.

Australia's treatment of her Aboriginal people will be the thing on which the world will judge Australia and Australians - Not just now, but in the greater perspective of history.

We recall our terrible past so that we can deal with it, to forgive where forgiveness is necessary, without forgetting; to ensure that never again will such inhumanity tear us apart; and to move ourselves to eradicate a legacy that lurks dangerously as a threat to our democracy.

I think a commission set up to examine slavery and the consequences of it, would probably be a very fruitful, important dialogue for the United States to be involved in.

It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that "past" which "ought not to be stirred up.

I have been trying to create a campaign to have our country make an apology for slavery, for the way that blacks were treated before the Civil War and after the Civil War.

The families of the killed and disappeared are entitled to the right to know what happened to their loved ones, and to adequate reparation for the suffering endured.

Reconciliation has taken place here in Rwanda and was successful because Rwandans reconciled themselves internally. If the tribunal had taken place in Rwanda, it might have helped. People could have watched justice being done.