Political Quotes

“I rise today and join my distinguished colleagues in commemorating the tragedy of the Armenian genocide. Today, we pay tribute to those who lost their lives during and after the first world war due to such terrible massacres. The basic facts of the tragic events that occurred in the Ottoman Turkish Empire between 1915 and 1923 are by now well known. It was not so at the time. In those years, the world did not have the wonder of modern telecommunications which today brings events from around the world to our attention instantaneously. The horrors of our time--in Rwanda, in Gorazde, in Haiti--remind us of the seemingly endless human capacity for brutality. We struggle to bring an end to the violence, to stop the aggressors and to give comfort and relief to the victims. In the face of such atrocities, and the wrenching human suffering they produce, we search in vain for signs that the progress of technology over the decades is accompanied by a civilizing of human nature itself. One way we can assert our humanity is to speak the truth.”