Activist Quote by Payam Akhavan

“The reason why the war ended in Bosnia was not because of amnesty but because a combined Croat-Bosnian offensive defeated the Serbs on the battlefield. Sometimes naïveté belongs not to the human rights activists but to the politicians.” quote by Payam Akhavan — Download Open image

“The reason why the war ended in Bosnia was not because of amnesty but because a combined Croat-Bosnian offensive defeated the Serbs on the battlefield. Sometimes naïveté belongs not to the human rights activists but to the politicians.”

Payam Akhavan

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 2.8 out of 5 (5 ratings)

Activist Defeated Human rights Offensive Politician Reason Sometimes War

More by Payam Akhavan

I hate the tribal hatred thesis - in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and places like that they kill each other because that's just what people…

Payam Akhavan

Image

We must sacrifice something in order to make the world better.

Payam Akhavan

Image

Helping survivors of residential schools in Canada is not the same as the UN sending in peacekeepers to prevent the genocide in Rwanda. But…

Payam Akhavan

Image

We need to sacrifice something. And this is what I find lacking. We want to construct an image of ourselves as virtuous but we…

Payam Akhavan

Image

Wounds simply won't heal if they are swept under the carpet.

Payam Akhavan

Image

Criminal trials are fundamentally about individual accountability whereas truth commissions are less about the guilt of the perpetrator and more about the suffering of…

Payam Akhavan

Image

Storytelling is very important. It is through context and relations that we understand the importance of human dignity. The concept means nothing as an…

Payam Akhavan

Image

“There can be no meaningful change if we choose to look down at the arena of anguish from thirty thousand feet.”

Payam Akhavan

Image

In Yugoslavia we were told we were not only naive idealists in wanting war criminals to be prosecuted but that we were actually standing…

Payam Akhavan

Image

There are realities that one needs to deal with, but very often what we are told is political reality is merely cynicism. One could…

Payam Akhavan

Image

When we deconstruct how radical evil occurs we realize that it is anything but spontaneous combustion. You need pyromaniacs.

Payam Akhavan

Image

When I joined the UN War Crimes Tribunal, it was a realization of the dream of justice, that finally after Nuremberg, the UN is…

Payam Akhavan

Image

Explore all 14 Payam Akhavan quotes

More Activist quotes

The image of blacks usually is one of people who are suffering from hunger, unemployment, and poverty. The idea of them as agents and…

Grace Lee Boggs

Image

“God has a way of picking a “nobody” and turning their world upside down, in order to create a “somebody” that will remove the…

Shannon L. Alder

Image

Social media is not just another way to connect feminist and activist voices - it amplifies our messages as well.

Jessica Valenti

Image

We must always refill and ensure there is a critical mass of leaders and activists committed to nonviolence and racial and economic justice who…

Marian Wright Edelman

Image

I have never been an activist for anything.

Jim Parsons

Image

When we criticize in Iran the actions of the government, the fundamentalists say that we and the Bush Administration are in the same camp.…

Shirin Ebadi

Image

Because my graduate academic training at law school was not one that included most of the intellectual traditions I find useful for understanding the…

Dean Spade