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c44c011
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I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.
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marriage
men
feminism
hate
relationships
women
love
married-life
mothers
sons
matrimony
psychology
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Martha Gellhorn |
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3bd8225
|
On the night of New Year's Day, I thought of a wonderful New Year's resolution for the men who run the world: get to know the people who only live in it.
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war
power
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Martha Gellhorn |
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b916f46
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No wars, in the war-logged record of our species, have been terminal. Until now, when we know that nuclear war would be the death of our planet. It is beyond belief that any governments-those brief political figures-arrogate to themselves the right to stop history, at their discretion.
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war
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Martha Gellhorn |
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7af4135
|
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.
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purge
stalin
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Martha Gellhorn |
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0299cc0
|
I had a sudden notion of why history is such a mess: humans do not live long enough. We only learn from experience and have no time to use it in a continuous and sensible way.
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travel
learning
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Martha Gellhorn |
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ce887ce
|
I love you. Have a hell of a good time. I don't really know what else is worth having.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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2605e98
|
People do not yet realize (because the mind isn't built that way) what war can be. They fear it but surely they fear it the way children fear nightmares, dimly, without definite images in their heads of how it will all work out.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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bba5461
|
The English are very proud of their Parliament, and week in, week out, century after century, they have pretty good cause to be.
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parliament-of-the-united-kingdom
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Martha Gellhorn |
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b4e1a2c
|
In Warsaw, you also remember that you are in a Communist-controlled country, though by all accounts the control is now humane and lenient, judged by what it was and what it is in other satellite countries. Still you do hear the incompetent echo in the tapped hotel telephone, you do notice that people look over their shoulders when talking in restaurants - the secret police are dormant but not forgotten; you feel in your bones, as you would ..
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poland
oppression
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Martha Gellhorn |
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9a7d8a1
|
Endurance was the Chinese secret weapon. The Japanese should have understood that, and everybody else had better remember it.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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a22b9d5
|
What was new to our ears these days, and thrilling to hear, was the steadiness and justice of those who spoke, the abscence of panic and exaggeration the quiet insistence on legal processes as opposed to trial by suspicion. McCarthyism so repelled the English that they take special care not to be infected by it.
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parliament-of-the-united-kingdom
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Martha Gellhorn |
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7a76f0a
|
Politics really must be a rotten profession considering what awful moral cowards most politicians become as soon as they get the job.
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politicians
morals
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Martha Gellhorn |
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1dd965f
|
I do not hope for a world at peace, all of it, all the time. I do not believe in the perfectibility of man, which is what would be required for world peace; I only believe in the human race. I believe the human race must continue.
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war
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Martha Gellhorn |
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65ff2be
|
He had no other life and no other knowledge; he knew that he could not live anywhere now because in his mind, slyly, there was nothing but horror.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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85f74f8
|
What gave these krauts a right to say who should be born and who shouldn't, and who could live and be let alone, and who would get caught and killed?
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Martha Gellhorn |
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429cb05
|
Since I am devoted to my own freedom, I didn't think it just to deny other people theirs; and a basic freedom must be to be bossed by your own kind, not by foreigners.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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5cc61d7
|
It is not easy to be the citizen of a Superpower, nor is it getting easier. I would feel isolated with my shame if I were not sure that I belong, among millions of Americans, to a perennial minority of the nation. The obstinate bleeding hearts who will never agree that might makes right and know if the end justifies the means, the end is worthless. Power corrupts, an old truism but why does it also make the powerful so stupid? Their power s..
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war
stupidity
power-corrupts
vietnam
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Martha Gellhorn |
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9abba4b
|
In democracies where the citizens may read, hear or say what they like, the leaders are no better and no worse than the followers. So perhaps, if we cannot blame the leaders because the job of peacemaking is a sorry mess, we can only blame ourselves.
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leadership
peacemaking
leaders
peace
democracy
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Martha Gellhorn |
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857f5af
|
As citizens, I think we all have an exhausting duty to now what our governments are up to, and it is cowardice or laziness to ask: what can I do about it anyway? Every squeak counts, if only in self-respect.
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truth
self-respect
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Martha Gellhorn |
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54d0f47
|
none had been outside Russia. I kept trying to remember something that I had read about a species of fish that was born, lived, spawned, died in the dark waters of a cave; and were blind.
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travel
exposure
soviet-russia
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Martha Gellhorn |
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ee684e1
|
The manipulated millions could be aroused or soothed by any lies. The guiding light of journalism was no stronger than a glow-worm.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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3569900
|
A dock worker from East Ham also spoke of freedom. "You'll never find the English going Communist" he said. "We don't like it. It's not true Communism, it dictatorial. We want to say what we think. I'm a republican myself and I don't like the Royal Family. They all look as if a good day's work would kill them"."
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republicanism
royal-family
|
Martha Gellhorn |
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3d57e0b
|
I am frightened and doubtful, and everyone who touches me must suffer.
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frightened
suffer
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Martha Gellhorn |
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0500369
|
I want to read and write and be very quiet.
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writing
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Martha Gellhorn |
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8eb1fdb
|
Someday our children, whom we love, may blame us for dishonoring America because we did not care enough about children 10,000 miles away [written, 1967].
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suffering-children
vietnam
honor
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Martha Gellhorn |
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0022feb
|
I felt both puny and pretentious, trying to write in the grandeur of that natural world where everything was older than time and I was the briefest object in the landscape.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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1834b44
|
Always delighted to grab any privileges I can get, I don't like the sense of being privileged by law.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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cbb2795
|
It is high time that I learn to be more careful about hope, a reckless emotion for travellers. The sensible approach would be to expect the worst, the very worst; that way you avoid grievous disappointment and who knows, with a tiny bit of luck, you might even have a moderately pleasant surprise, like the difference between hell and purgatory.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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74a134f
|
Here one has the perfect example of justice: the men have kept their women enslaved--the Arabs more than the Christian Copts--kept them stupid and limited and apart, for their male vanity and power; result: the dull women bore the daylights out of the men.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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0cad632
|
Slowly we wound uphill past fields and thick forest until we reached the eastern edge of the Rift Valley. Far below, as far as I could see, lay the golden plain ringed by blue mountains. It was true, it was there, and more magical than I had ever pictured it.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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5208c92
|
This was not the velvet embracing desert sky at El Geneina; this was infinite space. The idea of no boundaries, no end, is terrifying in the abstract and much worse if you are looking at it. The far-off stars were an icy crust; the darkness beyond the stars was more than I could handle. The machinery that keeps me going is not geared to cope with infinity and eternity as so clearly displayed in that sky.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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c3d48ae
|
It is amazing that the refugees stay sane. First the bombs, perhaps the "battle" around them, their casualties, their naked helplessness; then the flight, leaving behind everything they have worked for all their lives; then the semi-starvation and ugly hardship of the camps or the slums; and as a final cruelty, the killing diseases which only strike at them."
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war
poverty
vietnam
refugees
|
Martha Gellhorn |
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2bc3313
|
The white hunter was laughing happily, his adoring girl was open-mouthed in admiration for his nerve, I was sweating with dismay and outrage, and then an elephant charged and did not stop and our hero stepped hard on the gas and drove off, saying, "Not bluffing that time." So now I knew, lucky me, what a medium-size elephant stampede was like. Doomed to see elephants in the company of lunatics. All I wanted was to watch them with love and r..
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Martha Gellhorn |
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04dade8
|
Impatience leading swiftly to boredom is my vice, not panic.
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|
Martha Gellhorn |
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74c80a1
|
My vehement distaste for Reaganism and Thatcherism is joined to 35.2 million Americans who voted against Reagan in 1980 (out of a total 76.5 million votes cast) and 37.5 million Americans who did likewise in 1984; and allied with 57.8% of the British electorate who voted against Mrs. Thatcher in 1987. Plus 56.1% anti-Thatcherites in 1979 and 57.6% in 1983. That is quite a lot of consensus repugnance.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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bb765b2
|
The latrine broke my lion heart.
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|
Martha Gellhorn |
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418291d
|
She tried, leaning back and closing her eyes, to put in order what she had seen, heard, and what she had known before. She wanted to place her knowledge in paragraphs ( a good opening sentence? she thought), so that it would be easy to handle when she came to write it. But it did not fit in paragraphs and she could not see it, plain and informative, colourful but unimpassioned, on a page. There was no beginning, no middle, no end.
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Martha Gellhorn |
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5a52871
|
The fear syndrome [a species of propaganda], by exaggerating Vietcong power for destruction, misplaces the real pain of the real war, and is immensely dangerous. It leads to hysteria, to hawk-demands for a bigger war; it pushes us nearer and nearer to World War Three. The fear syndrome in no way serves the American cause; it can only jeopardize more American lives, with the ultimate risk of jeopardizing all life.
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fear-syndrome
vietnam
vietnam-war
propaganda
|
Martha Gellhorn |
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b061428
|
The men in Washington seem unable to accept that there are more poor people than rich peoplele in the world. They do not recognize that poor people, in the late twentieth century, cannot endure poverty and disease and ignorance forever. When minimal social justice is long denied, the poor will rebel. If rebellion can be crushed - as is perhaps possible in a very small country like El Salvador - it will rise again later. Nicaragua can be bom..
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rebellion
poverty
nicaragua
poor-people
rich-people
|
Martha Gellhorn |
|
1287411
|
Dr. Soekarno was always exactly what he was in the beginning, a whizz-bang demagogue, an opportunist, just another little dictator. U.S. officialdom never tires of backing that type. Nor does U.S. officialdom take sufficient note of the writing on the wall, such as: Down With All Whites. I wonder what the phrase looks like in Vietnamese.
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war
java
martha-gellhorn
indonesia
|
Martha Gellhorn |
|
a3b5f7c
|
It is an almost overpowering effort to be just, informed, sane and strong when you are worried about a roof over your head, money for food, for the children's shoes, for coal, for a little fun, worried and harassed by the daily unending problem of living. But it is an effort that must be made, for lasting peace is not going to come of itself, nor cheaply, nor due to someone else.
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responsibility
|
Martha Gellhorn |