“Think about it: virtually every atrocity in the history of humankind was enabled by a populace that turned away from a reality that seemed too painful to face, while virtually every revolution for peace and justice has been made possible by a group of people who chose to bear witness and demanded that others bear witness as well.”
Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), p. 139
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Melanie Joy16
American psychologist 1966Related quotes
“When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 207
Jason Reynolds (1983) author of young adult novels
[McKenzie, Joi-Marie, Why Author Jason Reynolds Writes For The Youngest Generation, https://www.essence.com/entertainment/author-jason-reynolds/, Essence, 10 March 2020, February 12, 2020]
Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist
to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video
Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist
"Three Elegies for Susan Sontag", New Politics (Summer 2005), Vol. X, No. 3 http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue39/Willis39.htm <br class="br">Context: Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same.
Thomas J. J. Altizer (1927–2018) American radical theologian
The Gospel of Christian Atheism (1966), Preface
Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist
Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
Context: To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea, — an idea which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed by another if I fail to announce it to-day, — I can claim no merit save that of priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first perceives the dawn?
Yes: all men believe and repeat that equality of conditions is identical with equality of rights; that property and robbery are synonymous terms; that every social advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of superior talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.
Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist
Esthetics and Loss, Artforum (1987), printed in in The Burning Library: Writings on Art, Literature and Sexuality 1969-1993, (Picador, London, 1995)
Articles and Interviews
“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor