Martha Gellhorn - People Quotes

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War happens to people, one by one. That is really all I have to say and it seems to me I have been saying it forever. Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

Martha Gellhorn
Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit.

Martha Gellhorn
America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing. We are the richest people in the world and they are among the poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help — because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And perhaps because they won.

Martha Gellhorn
In the end, in England, when you want to find out how people are feeling, you always go to the pubs.

Martha Gellhorn
After they had public opinion all properly shaped, what good did it do? It was immensely easy to make people hate, but it was almost impossible to make them help.

Martha Gellhorn
Journalism at its best and most effective is education. Apparently people would not learn for themselves, nor from others.

Martha Gellhorn
People often say, with pride, 'I'm not interested in politics.' They might as well say, 'I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.'... If we mean to keep any control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics.

Martha Gellhorn
People may correctly remember the events of twenty years ago (a remarkable feat), but who remembers his fears, his disgusts, his tone of voice? It is like trying to bring back the weather of that time.

Martha Gellhorn