In his fierce, bold determination to see the lives of modern-day slaves up close, Benjamin Skinner reminds me of the British abolitionist of two hundred years ago
ADAM HOCHSCHILDAnd yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor
More Adam Hochschild Quotes
-
-
After all, where else in the world at this point did you have Americans in uniform who were being bombed by Nazi planes four years before the U.S. entered World War II?
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
You can sense the vast inequalities of Tsarist Russia in [Anton] Chekhov and [Lev] Tolstoy.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Mussolini, in 1935, went and then in the next year, conquered Ethiopia, acquiring himself a colony.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Ronald Reagan perfected the subtler version long ago by talking about “welfare mothers” – a code phrase for people of colour.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Leopold’s Congo is but one of those silences of history.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Many of the principle weapons that the Nazis used during World War II had their first trial in combat in Spain
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Compared with how we’ve ducked it in the United States, Canada should be really proud of how you have welcomed a significant number of refugees – far more, in fact, than we Americans have, even though our population is vastly larger.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
So people at the time really saw fascism not just as an evil but as an aggressive evil that seemed to be spreading.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
All over Budapest, statues have been replaced, museum exhibits have been redone, to turn ethnic Hungarians, not Jews, into the prime victims of the Germans during World War II.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Speaking of Germany in 1933, I don’t think you can remove yourself from politics when, in so many countries – the United States, Poland, Hungary, and many others
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Hitler and Mussolini jumped in on the side of Francisco Franco and his Spanish nationalists, sent them vast amounts of military aid, airplanes, tanks and Mussolini sent 80,000 ground troops as well.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Things have gotten openly more extreme in the last few years. I was lecturing in Hungary, whose prime minister, Victor Orban, is an example of this trend.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
I think [George] Orwell is right. There are certainly moments when political differences appear minor, and someone can claim to be non-political or to want to stay out of the fray, but today is not one of those moments.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
One of my favourite contemporary fiction writers is a Texan, Ben Fountain. His extraordinary novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Half-Time Walk, all takes place within the half-time show at a Dallas Cowboys football game.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD






