We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects...and the assorted human beings who perpetuate and maintain this perversity.
Teach music and singing at school in such a way that it is not a torture but a joy for the pupil; instill a thirst for finer music in him, a thirst which will last for a lifetime.
To those human beings who are of any concern to me, I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities, profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, and the wretchedness of the vanquished.
Torture is senseless violence, born in fear... torture costs human lives but does not save them. We would almost be too lucky if these crimes were the work of savages: the truth is that torture makes torturers.
I don't know about torture. I have educated myself on many things but on torture I have not known the boundary between what is torture and what isn't torture. I know the NRA tie these people (rebels, etc.) when they catch them. They tie their hands backwards. I am now being told that is torture. It is the traditional method.
The aim of torture is to destroy a person as a human being, to destroy their identity and soul. It is more evil than murder... Today we know that survivors of torture can be helped to regain their health and strength, and in helping them we take the weapon from their torturers. They sought the destruction of other human beings. We have proved that they have not succeeded.
Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere...
I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture.
The human heart in its perversity finds it hard to escape hatred and revenge.
Because golf exposes the flaws of the human swing - a basically simple maneuver - it causes more self-torture than any game short of Russian roulette.
The hunger [to success] is the same, no matter what it is that you're doing. It's like an unquenchable thirst to learn more, or to feel like you could have done more, and to be brutally honest and self critical, which is very hard to do. It's easy, and human nature is to just blame somebody else. It's very, very hard to self assess.
Could that have been what happened to the human race - a willing perversity that set at naught all human values which had been so hardly won and structured in the light of reason for a span of more than a million years?
As I say the UK's position on the issue of torture and the use of torture has not changed. Our policy is the same as it has been. We condemn torture.
The United States government does not authorise or condone torture of detainees. Torture, and conspiracy to commit torture, are crimes under US law, wherever they may occur in the world.
At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction . . . and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness.
They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.
I abhor anything that constitutes torture. Water-boarding, its perfectly clear to me it is torture. I never supported extraordinary rendition to torture, always said that Guantanamo should be closed. There is no clash of ideals and pragmatism there.