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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

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Martha Gellhorn
Age: 89 †
Born: 1908
Born: November 8
Died: 1998
Died: February 15
Journalist
Novelist
War Correspondent
Writer
St. Louis
Missouri
Martha Ellis Gellhorn
Tough
Citizens
Stand
Opinion
Obliges
House
Informed
Make
Citizenship
Citizen
Occupation

More quotes by Martha Gellhorn

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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
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After a lifetime of war-watching, I see war as an endemic human disease, and governments are the carriers.
Martha Gellhorn
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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
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travel is compost for the mind
Martha Gellhorn
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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
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The world's fat is badly divided.
Martha Gellhorn
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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
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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
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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
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[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
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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
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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
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I do not see myself as a footnote to someone else's life.
Martha Gellhorn
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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
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I found out about the Spanish war because I was in Germany when it began.
Martha Gellhorn
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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
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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
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I feel very troubled in the head and heart.
Martha Gellhorn
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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
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I daresay I was the worst bed partner in five continents.
Martha Gellhorn