Martha Gellhorn - The Face of War (1959)

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

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
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 kill the future.

Martha Gellhorn
Serious, careful, honest journalism is essential, not because it is a guiding light but because it is a form of honorable behavior, involving the reporter and the reader.

Martha Gellhorn
By its existence, the Peace Movement denies that governments know best; it stands for a different order of priorities: the human race comes first.

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

Martha Gellhorn
After a lifetime of war-watching, I see war as an endemic human disease, and governments are the carriers.

Martha Gellhorn
I see mysteries and complications wherever I look, and I have never met a steadily logical person.

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
Despite official drivel about clean bombs and tactical nuclear weapons, anyone who can read a newspaper or listen to a radio knows that some of us mortals have the power to destroy the human race and man's home on earth. We need not even make war; only by preparing, by playing with our new weapons, we poison the air, the water, the soil of our plants, damage the health of the living, and weaken the chances of the newborn.

Martha Gellhorn