Martha Gellhorn quotes

I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Love #Relationship #Marriage

Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Self Esteem #Self #Survival

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

#Hero #Government #Justice

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

#War #Government #Disease

I tell you loneliness is the thing to master. Courage and fear, love, death are only parts of it and can easily be ruled afterwards. If I make myself master my own loneliness there will be peace or safety: and perhaps these are the same.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Love #Loneliness #Safety

in November you begin to know how long the winter will be.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Winter #Long #November

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

#House #Citizens #Occupation

travel is compost for the mind
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Mind #Compost

It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Imagination #Bitterness #Would Be

There were ten concentration camps in France from 1939 on.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#France #Concentration #Camps

If I practised sex, out of moral conviction, that was one thing; but to enjoy it... seemed a defeat.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Sex #Moral #Defeat

Joseph McCarthy, the Junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin, ruled America like devil king for four years. His purges were an American mirror image of Stalin's purges, an unnoticed similarity.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Kings #Mirrors #Years

The English are very proud of their Parliament, and week in, week out, century after century, they have pretty good cause to be.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Proud #Causes #Week

I followed the war wherever I could reach it.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#War

But now that the guerrilla fighting is over, the Spaniards are again men without a country or families or homes or work, though everyone appreciates very much what they did.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Country #Home #Fighting

I didn't write. I just wandered about.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Writing

[On Paris:] I do not know any city so beautiful and you can be unhappy there and notice your unhappiness less, having the city to look at.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Beautiful #Cities #Paris

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

#Creativity #Imagination #Innovation

Between his eyes, there were four lines, the marks of such misery as children should never feel. He spoke with that wonderful whisky voice that so many Spanish children have, and he was a tough and entire little boy.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Children #Eye #Boys

I feel very troubled in the head and heart.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Heart #Head And Heart #Feels

After the desperate years of their own war, after six years of repression inside Spain and six years of horror in exile, these people remain intact in spirit. They are armed with a transcendent faith; they have never won, and yet they have never accepted defeat.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#War #Years #People

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

#Peace #Race #Government

Furthermore, they were constantly informed by all the camp authorities that they had been abandoned by the world: they were beggars and lucky to receive the daily soup of starvation.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#World #Soup #Lucky

If I were a first rate writer, I wouldn't mind a bit. What does depress me is this: it is so desperately hard and so obsessive and so lonely to write that, in return for all this work, one would like a little self satisfaction. And that is never going to come, for the simple reason that I do not deserve it. I cannot be a good enough writer. You see? I call it grim. But the future looks awfully clear to me.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Lonely #Depressing #Writing

Thousand got away to other countries; thousands returned to Spain tempted by false promises of kindness. By the tens of thousands, these Spaniards died of neglect in the concentration camps.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Country #Kindness #Promise

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

#Lying #People #Deceit

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

#War #Imagination #People

I daresay I was the worst bed partner in five continents.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Bed #Partners #Worst

the ends never justify the means because IT never ends.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Mean #Ends #Justify

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 out, but I'm not complaining,... Those who find growing old terrible are people who haven't done what they wanted with their lives.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Car #People #Age

A broken heart is such a shabby thing, like poverty and failure and the incurable diseases which are also deforming. I hate it and am ashamed of it, and I must somehow repair this heart and put it back into its normal condition, as a tough somewhat scarred but operating organ.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Broken Heart #Hate #Disease

Life is not long at all, never long enough, but days are very long indeed.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Long #Life Is #Enough

What the trees can do handsomely-greening and flowering, fading and then the falling of leaves-human beings cannot do with dignity, let alone without pain.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Pain #Fall #Tree

The only way I can pay back for what fate and society have handed me is to try, in minor totally useless ways, to make an angry sound against injustice.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Fate #Trying #Useless

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

#War #Home #Men

... people miss a great deal by being sensible.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#People #Missing #Sensible

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

#Jobs #Mean #Pride

The world's fat is badly divided.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#World #Rich #Poor

All amateur travellers have experienced horror journeys, long or short, sooner or later, one way or another. As a student of disaster, I note that we react alike to our tribulations: frayed and bitter at the time, proud afterwards. Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Travel #Self Esteem #Journey

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

#People #Journalism

perhaps these men in the House Caucus Room [Committee on Un-American Activities] are determined to spread silence: to frighten those voices which will shout no, and ask questions, defend the few, attack cruelty and proclaim the rights and dignity of man. ... America is going to look very strange to Americans and they will not be at home here, for the air will slowly become unbreathable to all forms of life except sheep.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Home #Men #Sheep

In the last camp they all ate grass, until the authorities forbade them to pull it up. They were accustomed to having the fruits of their little communal gardens stolen by the guards, after they had done all the work; but at the last camp everything was stolen.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Garden #Done #Littles

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

#Hurt #War #Heart

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

#Footnotes

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

#Years #Weather #Voice

It is alleged that half a million Spanish men, women and children fled to France after the Franco victory.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Children #Men #Victory

The human spirit can be indomitable and it is this rare quality that is not at all to be expected that makes survivors of us all, the human race in the grand scheme of things.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Race #Quality #Survivor

I used to write letters to the wounded in the Palace Hotel, and I used to drive a station wagon with blood in bottles to a battalion aid station.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Writing #Blood #Bottles

I’m not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future, or any future.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Jobs #Rights #Standards

Then somebody suggested I should write about the war, and I said I didn't know anything about the war. I did not understand anything about it. I didn't see how I could write it
-- Martha Gellhorn

#War #Writing #Should

I found out about the Spanish war because I was in Germany when it began.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#War #Germany #Found

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

#Remember #Tyranny #Vigilance

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

#War #Heart #Men

You have to stop living in order to write.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Writing #Order

[On the United States:] We are a wildly energetic people in our pursuit of pleasure, let alone in our pursuit of money, and we are very odd to look at as we go about our lives.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#People #United States #Looks

In more than half the nations of our world, torture certifies that the form of government is tyranny. Only tyranny, no matter how camouflaged, needs and employs torturers. Torture has no ideology.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Our World #Government #Needs

stop spying on the lawful citizenry. Democracy and dossiers go ill together. It is all right for God but all wrong for the State to keep its eye on sparrows.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Eye #Rights #Together

We lisp in numbers, in the U.S. We are deluged by ample, often mysterious statistics. ... Like many in this country, I have come to regard statistics with doubt and merely as a hint of the probable shape of fact.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Country #Data #Numbers

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

#People #Feelings #Want

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

#Imagination #England #Alarmists

Americans did not acquire their fear neurosis as the result of a traumatic experience - war devasting their country, pestilence sweeping the land, famine wiping out helpless millions. Americans had to be taught to hate and fear an unseen enemy. The teachers were men in official positions, in government, men whom Americans normally trust without question.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Country #Teacher #Fear

Freedom' is the most expensive possession there is; it has to be paid for with loneliness.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Freedom #Loneliness #Possession

Officialdom is hostile to inquiring outsiders.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Inquiring #Outsiders #Bureaucracy

Dachau has been my own lifelong point of no return. Between the moment when I walked through the gate of that prison, with its infamous motto, 'Arbeit Macht Frei,' and when I walked out at the end of a day that had no ordinary scale of hours, I was changed, and how I looked at the human condition, the world we live in, changed ... Years of war had taught me a great deal, but war was nothing like Dachau. Compared to Dachau, war was clean.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#War #Years #Holocaust

the private conscience is the last and only protection of the civilized world.
-- Martha Gellhorn

#World #Lasts #Protection

It is charming the way everyone in the South says, 'Come back.' This is the regulation farewell at gas stations, soda fountains, general stores, tourist camps. 'Come back,' they call, 'come back.' Do they feel marooned in one place, lost, needing to believe someone will return to share their exile on the similar main streets, in the varied but always new-looking land?
-- Martha Gellhorn

#Believe #Farewell #Land