Jacobo Timerman

“Argentina's impotence in finding adequate political responses to that most elemental of needs, survival.

The Japanese work and save for years in order to be able to live one day like the Argentines, who neither work nor save.

Memory is the chief enemy of the solitary tortured man.

The same problem as Argentina, an unwillingness to be aware of one's own drama.

Hope is synonymous with anxiety and anguish.

Deliberately, I evaded conjecture on my own destiny, that of my family and the nation. I devoted myself simply to being consciously a solitary man entrusted with a specific task.

Those slogans Argentines like to quote of themselves: "God is Argentine. Nothing will happen here.", "As long as bulls don't turn homosexual, the Argentine economy will flourish."

The military has assumed power by dislodging elected governments in 1930, 1943, 1955, 1962, 1966 and now in 1976.

The great silence, which appears in every civilized country that passively accepts the inevitability of violence and then the fear that suddenly befalls it. That silence which can transform any nation into an accomplice.

Hatred toward the Jew needs no system, discipline or methodology.

In every totalitarian mind, hatreds are transformed into fantasies and confirm to a view of the world that matches these fantasies and these very fantasies lead to the development of their operational tactics.

The chief obsession of the totalitarian mind lies in its need for the world to be clearcut and orderly. Any subtlety, contradiction or complexity upsets and confuses this notion and becomes intolerable.”
― Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number