"The rights of democracy are not reserved for a select group within society, they are the rights of all the people."
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"My generation is haunted by the images of the Jewish children in the ghettos and the concentration camps. The crimes committed against them caused us grief that haunts us through our lives. But for the very same raison d'être we feel outraged by the images of persecuted Palestinian children, and this time it is Israel that is responsible for the offenses."
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"Our solidarity with our fellow humans must not let itself be limited to different political systems. An imprisoned union leader is an imprisoned union leader, no matter if it takes place in Guatemala or Poland or Turkey. A burning village is a burning village, no matter if it is terrorbombed in El Salvador or Afghanistan."
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"Werner [Swedish communist leader] is getting used to publicly denouncing the misdeeds of his fellow party members around the World. But he should perhaps start asking himself if it is not Leninism itself that is to blame."
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"We encounter single human stories in a terrifyingly simple way. We see images of pain and torture, of mutilated children, mutilated people… Our reaction is compassion, a feeling agitated by senseless suffering. Because crime is always a crime, and terror is always terror, even it's done in the name of high goals and principles. It is an illusion to believe that you can meet the demands of social justice with violence and military might."
-Olof Palme
