Slowly we wound uphill past fields and thick forest until…

Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.

— Martha Gellhorn

All politicians are bores and liars and fakes. I talk to people.

— Martha Gellhorn

“This was not the velvet embracing desert sky at El Geneina; this was infinite space. The idea of no boundaries, no end, is terrifying…

— Martha Gellhorn

I do not see myself as a footnote to someone else's life.

— Martha Gellhorn

the English don't go in for imagination: imagination is considered to be improper if not downright alarmist.

— Martha Gellhorn

My definition of what makes a journey wholly or partially horrible is boredom.

— Martha Gellhorn

Joseph McCarthy, the Junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin, ruled America like devil king for four years. His purges were an American mirror image of…

— Martha Gellhorn

Public opinion, though slow as lava, in the end forces governments towards more sanity, more justice. My heroes and heroines are all private citizens.

— Martha Gellhorn

I daresay I was the worst bed partner in five continents.

— Martha Gellhorn

Once you get a tyranny, you don't easily get rid of it. Much better to remember about eternal vigilance.

— Martha Gellhorn

In the last camp they all ate grass, until the authorities forbade them to pull it up. They were accustomed to having the fruits…

— Martha Gellhorn

Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.

— Martha Gellhorn

Americans did not acquire their fear neurosis as the result of a traumatic experience - war devasting their country, pestilence sweeping the land, famine…

— Martha Gellhorn

From the earliest wars of men to our last heart-breaking worldwide effort, all we could do was kill ourselves. Now we are able to…

— Martha Gellhorn

Why do people talk of the horrors of old age? It's great. I feel like a fine old car with the parts gradually wearing…

— Martha Gellhorn