Quotes about Torture
How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?
— Elie Wiesel
Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?
— Albert Camus
Hell has no benefits, only torture.
— John Milton
The Deceiver can magnify a little sin for the purpose of causing one to worry, torture, and kill oneself with it. This is why a Christian should learn not to let anyone easily create an evil conscience in him. Rather let him say, "This error and this failing pass away with my other imperfections and sins, which I must include in the article of faith: I believe in the forgiveness of sins.
— Martin Luther
Teach me, 0 God, not to torture myself, not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection, but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith.
— Soren Kierkegaard
Yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam and Eve deceived You, You chased them from paradise. When You were displeased by Noah's generation, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom lost Your favor, You caused the heavens to rain down fire and damnation. But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!
— Elie Wiesel
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.
— John Calvin
It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.
— John Henry Newman
Occasionally, merely for the pleasure of being cruel, we put unoffending Frenchmen on the rack with questions framed in the incomprehensible jargon of their native language, and while they writhed, we impaled them, we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own vile verbs and participles.
— Mark Twain
such a brutal way of killing someone that it gave birth to the word "excruciating.
— Shane Claiborne
To participate in the Eucharist is to live inside God's imagination. It is to be caught up into what is really real, the body of Christ. As human persons, body and soul, are incorporated into the performance of Christ's corpus verum, they resist the state's ability to define what is real through the mechanism of torture.22
— Walter Brueggemann
The torturer scores a victory over his victim when the latter, in the grip of doubt, begins to torture himself.
— Elie Wiesel