Jonestown Massacre Quotes

The Trojan Horse Sterling had referred to reflected his belief that the truth about Jonestown had never been revealed to the American people. A belief shared by his fellow co-founders. They were certain that while there were undoubtedly suicides at Jonestown, the event could more accurately be described as a mass murder that resulted from an experiment of sorts carried out by various US agencies. ~ James Morcan

There's a great scene in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [1974] that I'm obsessed with: Sally is being chased by Leatherface with a chainsaw. And she runs into thorn bushes. And she's getting tangled up in it because she's running fast. But Sally needs to move slowly in order to get through the bushes - she will get farther faster by going slowly because her hair and clothes won't get tangled and caught. There's something really beautiful about understanding that, while someone's chasing you with a chainsaw, you have to move more slowly in order to get away. ~ Christopher Bollen

It is essential to persuade the soldier that those he is being urged to massacre are bandits who do not deserve to live; before killing other good, decent fellows like himself, his gun would fall from his hands. ~ Andre Gide

Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy, but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises in similar ways. They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war. Rosewater, for instance, had shot a fourteen-year-old fireman, mistaking for a German soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes.
So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Jim Jones had wanted his grand gesture to make an impression on the entire world, and, to that extent, he succeeded. But the Jonestown deaths quickly became renowned not as a grandly defiant revolutionary gesture, but as the ultimate example of human gullibility. ~ Jeff Guinn

There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

The "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" hitchhiker really made people never want to hitchhike again - the hitcher, the show. Hitchhiking is always vaguely sexual. ~ John Waters

To dismiss the current extinction wave on the grounds that extinctions are normal events is like ignoring a genocidal massacre on the grounds that every human is bound to die at some time anyway. ~ Jared Diamond

The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten. ~ Milan Kundera

She knew nothing of the massacre that went on around her, but when she released the wail of a broken hearted mother, one man heard her. The one who took her son's life. ~ Elizabeth Bourgeret

War is massacre. It is 100 per cent negative. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

The reaction came when he realized the waste and extravagance involved. He somtimes looked back with awe at the carnivals of affection he had given, as a general might gaze upon a massacre he had ordered to satisfy an impersonal blood lust. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The captive had broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock- tick
a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome were laid when Christ was crucified; when the Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was "news." It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need? ~ Mark Twain

Recalling some of the most spectacular horrors of history
the burning of heretics and witches at the stake, the wholesale massacre of "heathens," and other no less repulsive manifestations of Christian civilization in Europe and elsewhere
modern man is filled with pride in the "progress" accomplished, in one line at least, since the end of the dark ages of religious fanaticism. ~ Savitri Devi

Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves. ~ Joseph Warren

Terror attacks are now 'man-caused disasters.' And the 'global war on terror' is no more. It is an 'overseas contingency operation.'
Nidal Hassan proudly tells a military court that he, a soldier of Allah, killed 13 American soldiers in the name of jihad. but the massacre remains officially classified as an act not of terrorism but of 'workplace violence. ~ Charles Krauthammer

By April 1999, the plain was nearly filled, all the way to the foothills. But the fiercely independent residents refused to incorporate. A new town would only impose new rules and new taxes. The 100,000 new arrivals filled one continuous suburb with no town center: no main street, no town hall, town library, or town name. No one was sure what to call it. Littleton is a quiet suburb south of Denver where the massacre did not actually occur. Although the name would grow synonymous with the tragedy, Columbine lies several miles west, across the South Platte River, in a different county with separate schools and law enforcement. The postal system slapped "Littleton" onto a vast tract of seven hundred square miles, stretching way up into the foothills. ~ Dave Cullen

Sir Steven Runciman, whose history of the Crusades is an imperishable work, because it demonstrates that medieval Christian fundamentalism not only constituted a menace to Islamic civilization but also directly resulted in the sack of Byzantium, the retardation of Europe, and the massacre of the Jews. ~ Christopher Hitchens

A rogue who has been condemned to death by the
tribunal says he wants to resist oppression simply because he wants to resist the scaffold!" Saint-Just's
indignation is hard to understand in that, until his time, the scaffold was precisely nothing else but one of
the most obvious symbols of oppression. But at the heart of this logical delirium, at the logical conclusion
of this morality of virtue, the scaffold represents freedom. It assures rational unity, and harmony in the
ideal city. It purifies (the word is apt) the Republic and eliminates malpractices that arise to contradict the
general will and universal reason. "They question my right to the title of philanthropist," Marat exclaims,
in quite a different style. "Ah, what injustice! Who cannot see that I want to cut off a few heads to save a
great number?" A few - a faction? Naturally - and all historic actions are performed at this price. But
Marat, making his final calculations, claimed two hundred and seventy-three thousand heads. But he
compromised the therapeutic aspect of the operation by screaming during the massacre: "Brand them with
hot irons, cut off their thumbs, tear out their tongues." This philanthropist wrote day and night, in the
most monotonous vocabulary imaginable, of the necessity of killing in order to create. He wrote again, by
candlelight deep down in his cellar, during the September nights while his henchmen were installing
spec ~ Albert Camus

Roth grinned then. Anyway, back to me. I'm all better and I am back. He slid me a sly look that made me want to punch him instead of cry into my pillow like a baby. I'm sure I was missed. He took a big bite of the hamburger and grinned around the mouthful. A lot.
I didn't know what happened that switched my emotions so fast. The hurt his rejection had left behind exploded into rage- like the head-spinning, spraying-green-vomit kind of rage. My brain kicked off. I wasn't thinking as I reached over and plucked the hamburger right out of his hand.
Twisting at the waist, I threw the hamburger on the floor behind Roth as hard as I could. The satisfactory splat it made as ketchup and mayo splattered like a gruesome burger massacre brought a wide smile to my face. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

If one accepts the 24th and 104th Psalms as scriptural norms, then surface mining and other forms of earth destruction are perversions. If we take the Gospels seriously, how can we not see industrial warfare - with its inevitable massacre of innocents - as a most shocking perversion? By the standard of all scriptures, neglect of the poor, of widows and orphans, of the sick, the homeless, the insane, is an abominable perversion. ~ Wendell Berry

If guns don't kill people, why do mass killers arm themselves with guns? ~ DaShanne Stokes

The god of Moses would call for other tribes, including his favorite one, to suffer massacre and plague and even extirpation, but when the grave closed over his victims he was essentially finished with them unless he remembered to curse their succeeding progeny. Not until the advent of the Prince of Peace do we hear of the ghastly idea of further punishing and torturing the dead. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Listening to the shrill rhetoric of hard line Brexiteers - either extolling the virtues of a 'no deal' Brexit, or suggesting its inevitability is simply down to the intransigence of the EU - I am reminded of another great folly in British history: 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. It is as if we are witnessing a modern day re-enactment of that foolhardy military manoeuvre in which a mix of poor communication, rash decisions and vainglorious personalities led to the needless massacre of countless cavalrymen. Messrs. Fox, Johnson and Rees-Mogg may relish the idea of charging headlong into battle against a well prepared and strongly defended position, immune to the ensuing casualties and collateral damage. It would be appreciated if they could kindly leave the rest of us out of their futile and reckless endeavours. ~ Alex Morritt

Nobody will mess with us, huh? Ever seen The Hills Have Eyes? The Chainsaw Massacre? Psycho!"
He laughed. "Yes, but I'll murder anyone who comes near you, do you hear me?" I nodded with a smirk. ~ Shelly Crane

The dried blood from the wounds leaves dark and repulsive stains on the ground. Cleaning them up, I think of the identical nature of men: the same red blood irrigating the same organs. These organs, situated in the same places, carry out the same functions. The same remedies cure the same illnesses everywhere under the sun, whether the individual be white or black. Everything united men. Why, then, do they kill each other in ignoble wars for causes that are futile when compared with the massacre of human lives? So many devastating wars! And yet man takes himself to be a superior being. In what way is his intelligence useful to him? His intelligence begets both good and ill, more often ill than good. ~ Mariama Ba

It was crooked," said Shadow. "All of it. None of it was for real. It was just a set-up for a massacre." "Exactly," said Wednesday's voice from the shadows. "It was crooked. But it was the only game in town. ~ Neil Gaiman

A collective insanity seemed to have seized the nation and turned them into something worse than beasts. The princess de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's intimate friend, was literally torn to pieces; her head, breasts, and pudenda were paraded on pikes before the windows of the Temple, where the royal family was imprisoned, while a man boasted drunkenly at a cafe that he had eaten the princess' heart, which he probably had. ~ J. Christopher Herold

the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican's rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors).2 More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those twenty-four hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The assassination of Allende quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Bohemia, the bloody massacre in Bangladesh caused Allende to be forgotten, the din of war in the Sinai Desert drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the massacres in Cambodia caused the Sinai to be forgotten, and so on, and on and on, until everyone has completely forgotten everything. ~ Milan Kundera

Seeing as this is probably my last hurrah, I don't suppose I could get you two bleeding hearts to massacre a village with me? For old time's sake. - Jackal ~ Julie Kagawa

What's with the serum?"
I don't know, but it sounds ominous. We better put a telepathic direction finder on Benway. The man's not to be trusted. Might do almost anything ... Turn a massacre into a sex orgy ... "
Or a joke."
Precisely. Arty type ... No principles ... ~ William S. Burroughs

The reason I know about 'Tomb Raider' is from when I was researching 'Elephant.' It was 1999, and I was trying to research the Columbine-massacre kids, and they had played video games, and I, at the time, had never really seen one. It was a world I didn't know. ~ Gus Van Sant

I turn and run, watching my feet trample a massacre of weeds. I mourn them. The only thing that grows is dandelions in the cracks of the sidewalk and we always end up killing them. ~ Ellie Lieberman

I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed. The whites provoked the war; their injustices, their indignities to our families, the cruel, unheard of and wholly unprovoked massacre at Fort Lyon ... shook all the veins which bind and support me. I rose, tomahawk in hand, and I have done all the hurt to the whites that I could. ~ Sitting Bull

I've never really been on a date, because I've been with the same girl since my early twenties, but on our first date, I showed her The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I was like, "Hey, you've got to see this!" And we've been together ever since. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

A monument will never change how she feels. It's unfair that victims should have to forgive those who raped, tortured, and killed, or burned villages to the ground. On an Island of World Peace, shouldn't those who inflicted terrible harm on others be forced to confess and atone, and not make widows and mothers pay for stone monuments? ~ Lisa See

ominous murmur ran through the legion of onlookers, who had heretofore maintained an uncharacteristic silence. Their resentment was palpable. Five days later Coligny was assassinated, and the streets of Paris ran with blood as the entire Huguenot wedding party was hunted down and slaughtered in one of the most infamous episodes in French history, known today as the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre. But this horrific mass murder, which claimed more than five thousand martyrs over the course of a week, was no spontaneous bloodletting. Rather, it was the denouement of a carefully constructed plot that utilized the unsuspecting Margot as both victim and bait to lure Coligny and his faction to their doom, an intrigue planned, instigated, and executed by the one individual in France powerful enough ~ Nancy Goldstone

Phrantzes considered for a moment, collecting his thoughts like a general rallying his surviving troops after a massacre. ~ K.J. Parker

Throughout all the pain of enslavement and despotism, of inquisition, forced conversion, and massacre, the Jewish people has carried in its heart the yearning for freedom and has given this craving a folk expression which includes every soul in Israel, every single downtrodden pauperized soul! ~ Berl Katznelson

From May until October, the Ottoman Government pursued methodically a plan of extermination far more hellish than the worst possible massacre. Orders for deportation of the entire Armenian population to Mesopotamia were dispatched to every province of Asia Minor. These orders were explicit and detailed. No hamlet was too insignificant to be missed. The news was given by town criers that every Armenian was to be ready to leave at a certain hour for an unknown destination. ~ Herbert Adams Gibbons

Everyone is potentially one of those people, Governor," I replied. "It's best to learn that before you do something you'll have trouble living with." Best to learn it, really, before anyone - perhaps dozens of anyones - died to teach it to you.
But it was a hard lesson to learn any other way, as I knew from very personal experience. ~ Anne Leckie

The character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): 'And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, 'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women- children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.'

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre ~ Thomas Paine

It was then that Brown took his revenge upon the world which, after twenty years of contemptuous and reckless bullying, refused him the tribute of a common robber's success. It was an act of cold-blooded ferocity, and it consoled him on his deathbed like a memory of an indomitable defiance. . . . Thus Brown balanced his account with the evil fortune. Notice that even in this awful outbreak there is a superiority as of a man who carries right - the abstract thing - within the envelope of his common desires. It was not a vulgar and treacherous massacre; it was a lesson, a retribution - a demonstration of some obscure and awful attribute of our nature which, I am afraid, is not so very far under the surface as we like to think. ~ Joseph Conrad

On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God's love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. ~ Yuval Noah Harari