Robert Fisk Quotes

38 quotes in 684 categories

• The [Israelis] believed - they were possessed of an absolute certainty and conviction - that 'terrorists' were in Chatila. How could I explain to them…
• When you have a crime against humanity that is so awesome in scale and death, it is more than permissible to look around and say,…
• I don't know what happens if they get bin Laden. I'm much more interested in what happens if they don't get bin Laden.
• It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near…
• The Americans may think they have 'liberated' Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves - they came in families and cruised the city in…
• In just one year in Bosnia, thirty of my colleagues died. There is a little Somme waiting for all innocent journalists.
• War is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents the total failure of the human spirit.
• I suppose, in the end, we journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any…
• And I think, in the end, that is the best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority - all authority - especially so…
• And history s fingers never relax their grip, never leave us unmolested, can touch us even when we would never imagine their presence.
• After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the…
• Colleagues will malign you if you’re a moderately successful journalist,
• Refuse to accept the narrative of history laid down by presidents, prime ministers, generals and journalists.
• President Bush will come here and there will be new "friends" of America to open a new relationship with the world, new economic fortunes for…
• U.S. journalists I don't think are very courageous. They tend to go along with the government's policy domestically and internationally. To question is seen as…
• Tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the "liberating" kind.
• Obama, who is becoming more and more preacher-like, wants to be the Punisher-in-Chi ef of the Western World, the Avenger-in-Chie f. There is something oddly…
• Everyone outside the Roman Empire was called a barbarian. Everyone outside Obama’s empire is called a terrorist.
• The sheer violence of it, the howl of air raid sirens and the air-cutting fall of the missiles carried its own political message; not just…
• And it's true, you hear things in Damascus and, after a few hours, the human double-take stops operating.

Browse Robert Fisk Quotes by Category