Oppose Torture

“A time comes when silence is betrayal” - Martin Luther King

Quotes on Torture

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?

Expediency asks the question - is it politic?

Vanity asks the question - is it popular?

But conscience asks the question - is it right?

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.

 – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Peace Prize 1964

"A time comes when silence is betrayal. Men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness so close around us... We are called upon to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers."

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Peace Prize 1964

“the Church teaches that "there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object".  Whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity”  “all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator"

– Pope John Paul II “Veritatis Splendor”

“The question of justice is closely connected with both universal responsibility and the question of honesty.  Justice entails a requirement to act when we become aware of injustice”

– Dali Lama Nobel Peace Prize 1989

“You must stand up for justice even against yourself”

–The Koran

"Who is guilty? Those who commit these crimes. But to the question, 'Who is responsible?' we are compelled to say: Aren't we all?"

-Elie Wiesel Nobel Peace Prize 1986

"If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?"

- Rabbi Hillel

“When we torture we are departing downward from humanity”

– Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“Power without morality is a prescription for disaster”

– Karen Greenberg

“Those who can make you believe absurdities will get you to commit atrocities”

- Voltaire

“This is not about who they are, this is about who we are”

– John McCain