We cannot bear to face our knowledge that the satisfaction of our desire for justice, which we confuse with our desire for vengeance, is impossible. And so we invent as a victim the most comprehensive image which our reason, however deranged, will permit us: the whole of a people and the descendants of that people; and count ourselves incomparably their superior because we stop short of the idea of annihilation.
--James Agee, on public reaction to Nazi atrocity films, and calls for a peace of vengeance, May 19, 1945 - in the Nation magazine
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http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/agee.html
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modified: Friday, 06-Aug-2004 09:19:15 EDT