Quotes from Philip Short

For if there is one lesson worth retaining from the travails of the Cold War and the miseries it brought in its wake, it is the folly of seeking simple answers to complicated questions. It is a lesson which governments still show no sign of learning.

When we contemplate what happened in Cambodia, we are looking not at some exotic horror story but into darkness, into the foul places of our own souls.

his youngest child, a four-year-old girl whom he adored, had suddenly fallen ill and lay dying.

having a line of coloured sand drawn around Phnom Penh to give the city magical protection.

The corollary of this visceral desire to avoid confrontation at all costs is that debate and argument do not function as a means of resolving differences. Between the extremes of acquiescence and violence there is no middle ground. The

For if there is one lesson worth retaining from the travails of the Cold War and the miseries it brought in its wake, it is the folly of seeking simple answers to complicated questions.

France says no to the despair which pushes towards violence those deprived of any other way to make themselves heard. It says no to the attitude which tramples underfoot public freedoms only to outlaw afterwards those who take up arms to defend those freedoms.

The Vietnamese never asked themselves, any more than had the French, whether the Cambodians wanted the new system they were introducing. They acted in the unassailable certitude of a superior truth.

Another Cercle member remembered Sary advising him to masturbate instead of wasting his time with young women.

Revolutions, even as they destroy, build on the model of what has gone before.