The Man Who Ended History Quotes

“The truth is not delicate and it does not suffer from denial—the truth only dies when true stories are untold.”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

“The agony of the dead is with us, and we hear their screams and walk among their ghosts. We cannot avert our eyes or plug up our ears. We must bear witness and speak for those who cannot speak. We have only one chance to get it right.”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

“Every moment, as we walk on this earth, we are watched and judged by the eyes of the universe.”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

“There are no monsters. The monster is us.”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

“The fact that we can never have complete, perfect knowledge does not absolve us of the moral duty to judge and to take a stand against evil.”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

“The silence of the victims of the past imposes a duty on the present to recover their voices, and we are most free when we willingly take up that duty.”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

“Yet, my grandfather was not a monster. He was simply a man of ordinary moral courage whose capacity for great evil was revealed to his and my everlasting shame. Labeling someone a monster implies that he is from another world, one which has nothing to do with us. It cuts off the bonds of affection and fear, assures us of our own superiority, but there's nothing learned, nothing gained. It's simple, but it's cowardly. I know now that only by empathizing with a man like my grandfather can we understand the depth of the suffering he caused. There are no monsters. The monster is us.”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

“One has to be careful, whenever one tells a story about a great injustice. We are a species that loves narrative, but has been taught not to trust an individual speaker.”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

“And so you see how the present and the past will strangle each other to death.”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

“Our lives are ruled by these small, seemingly ordinary moments hat turn out to have improbably large effects. Such randomness is much more common in human affairs than in nature...”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

“Some have said I should demand that the surviving members of Unit 731 be brought to justice. But what does that mean? I am no longer a child. I do not want to see trials, parades, spectacles. The law does not give you real justice.”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

“Clearing away the superficial structure of the reigns of emperors and the dates of battles, there was the deeper rhythm of history's ebb and flow not as the deeds of great men, but as the lives lived by ordinary men and women wading through the currents of the natural world around them: its geology, its seasons, its climate and ecology, the abundance and scarcity of the raw material for life.”
― Ken Liu, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary