The Memory of Justice (1976)

Telford Taylor: Self

Quotes 

• Telford Taylor, Himself : Most of these things are not done by monsters. They're done by very ordinary people, people very much like you and me. These things are results of pressures and circumstances to which human frailty succumbs. And a large part of it isn't really due to any intrinsic sadism or a desire to inflict pain - it's the degeneration of standards under pressures, boredom, fear, other influences of this kind. Well, I guess that I did think before that Americans, in their history, had been somewhat more immune to these pressures and that the historical record was a better one. The moral standards we tried to attain in peace and war were higher. I guess I still think we *try* to attain the higher values; but, yes, and succeed sometimes - succeed less often, I guess, than I thought before.

• Telford Taylor, Himself : Since I read "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" and I guess it was born in upon me that these things had happened before. The feeling that I'd had for a long time that these things didn't go on in the American armed forces, alas, it isn't so. They sometimes do.