The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their 'vital interests' are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the 'sanctity' of human life, or the 'conscience' of the civilized world.
- James Baldwin [From chapter one of "The Devil Finds Work" (orig. pub. 1976), page 489 of Collected Essays (1998)]

They are torturing people. They are torturing people on Guantanamo Bay. They are engaging in acts which amount to torture in the medieval sense of the phrase. They are engaging in good old-fashioned torture, as people would have understood it in the Dark Ages.
- Richard Bourke, Australian attorney

One thing is for certain: There won't be any more mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms.
- Bush [press availability in Monterrey, Mexico, Jan. 12, 2004]

We don't torture people in America and people who say we do simply know nothing about our country.
- George W. Bush [Interview with Australian TV - October 18, 2003]

[torture] presupposes, it requires, it craves the abrogation of our capacity to imagine others' suffering, dehumanizing them so much that their pain is not our pain. It demands this of the torturer, placing the victim outside and beyond any form of compassion or empathy, but also demands of everyone else the same distancing, the same numbness...
- Ariel Dorfman [from his book "Torture: A Collection"]

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Russian novelist

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
- James Anthony Froude

This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed . were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees.
- Rudolf Hoess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz

There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgement. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom- freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse. Herein undoubtedly lies part of the attractiveness of a mass movement.
- Eric Hoffer

This fight has nothing to do with soldierly gallantry or principles of the Geneva Convention. If the fight against the partisans is not waged with the most brutal means, we will shortly reach the point where the available forces are insufficient to control the area. It is therefore not only justified, but it is the duty of the troops to use all means without restriction, even against women and children, so long as it ensures success.
- Wilhelm Keitel, chief of staff of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces of Germany [Dec. 16, 1942]

Shamefully we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management.
- Edward Kennedy

Our enemies didn't adhere to the Geneva Convention. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death. But every one of us -- every single one of us -- knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them.
- John McCain, Republican US Senator

The debate here isn't only how to protect the country. It's how to protect our values.

If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America -- even those designated as 'unlawful enemy combatants.' If you make this exception the whole Constitution crumbles.
- Alberto J. Mora, former Navy General Counsel [Feb. 27, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, entitled "The Memo"]

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
- Friedrich Nietzche

... the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret.
- Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author

Our men... have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10 up... Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to "make them talk," and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later... stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.
- Philadelphia Ledger newspaper in 1901, from its Manila [Philippines] correspondent during the US war with Spain for the control of the Philippines

The coward wretch whose hand and heart can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start from the slightest pain or equal foe.
- Bertrand Russell