Jonathan Glover Quotes

#1. if philosophy develops in the right ways, it might help ease the conflicts between rival dogmatic certainties. But, even if this hope is right, philosophy will never be a quick fix. Its influence is slow, the result of patient questioning and discussion.

Jonathan Glover

#2. The first step away from being manipulated, and towards a more autonomous outlook, is to stand back from a set of responses and think.

Jonathan Glover

#3. Social Darwinism had continued to flourish in German. Together with Mendelian genetics, it was widely thought to provide a scientific basis for the eugenic 'Racial Hygiene' movement.

Jonathan Glover

#4. The hardest - the part that's hard is to kill, but once you kill, that becomes easier, to kill the next person and the next one and the next one." -Varnado Simpson, Charlie Company of My Lai

Jonathan Glover

#5. The desire not to use disparaging terms for other groups can have its comic side, and is often dismissed as a product of 'political correctness'. But the concern behind it is part of the growth of one of our central moral resources.

Jonathan Glover

#6. Part of the Maoist project was the deliberate construction of a new moral identity. To do this it was necessary to destroy people's previous sense of who they were and to make sure there was no room for it grow back.

Jonathan Glover

#7. A central part of the torturer's craft is to make his job easier by stripping the victim of protective dignity.

Jonathan Glover

#8. The genocide [in Rwanda] was not a spontaneous eruption of tribal hatred, it was planned by people wanting to keep power. There was a long government-led hat campaign against the Tutsis.

Jonathan Glover

#9. The humiliating climbdown, the necessary deception, and stepping over one's pride: they should each have their honoured place in a modern account of the political virtues.

Jonathan Glover

#10. Atrocities are easier to commit if respect for the victim can be neutralized. For this reason, humiliation handed out by those with power can be ominous. The link between humiliation and atrocity is often found.

Jonathan Glover

#11. Some of the world's violent conflicts are mainly economic, territorial or tribal. But many seem to come, at least in part, from conflicts between the belief systems of different groups.

Jonathan Glover

#12. A woman who was a schoolgirl at Hiroshima asked, "Those scientists who invented the atomic bomb, what did they think would happen if they dropped it?

Jonathan Glover

#13. If torture is permitted, it's hard to imagine what isn't.

Jonathan Glover

#14. The use of the blockade against Germany to starve large numbers of people to death broke through the moral barrier against the mass killing of civilians. It was the precedent for the 'conventional' bombing of civilians in the Second World War and then for the use of the atomic bomb.

Jonathan Glover

#15. A phased decision can avoid there being a key moment when the moral issue about killing civilians has to be confronted.

Jonathan Glover