60+ Martha Gellhorn Quotes On Education, War And Dachau

Martha Gellhorn was an American journalist and novelist. She was one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Martha Gellhorn on life, education, leadership.

Top 10 Martha Gellhorn Quotes

1. I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.
2. After a lifetime of war-watching, I see war as an endemic human disease, and governments are the carriers.
3. Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.
4. Public opinion, though slow as lava, in the end forces governments towards more sanity, more justice. My heroes and heroines are all private citizens.
5. In November you begin to know how long the winter will be.
6. I see mysteries and complications wherever I look, and I have never met a steadily logical person.
7. travel is compost for the mind
8. Officialdom is hostile to inquiring outsiders.
9. 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.
10. If I practised sex, out of moral conviction, that was one thing; but to enjoy it... seemed a defeat.

Martha Gellhorn Short Quotes

• My definition of what makes a journey wholly or partially horrible is boredom.
• the private conscience is the last and only protection of the civilized world.
• The world's fat is badly divided.
• I didn't write. I just wandered about.
• I daresay I was the worst bed partner in five continents.
• I feel very troubled in the head and heart.
• Freedom' is the most expensive possession there is; it has to be paid for with loneliness.
• the ends never justify the means because IT never ends.
• You have to stop living in order to write.

Martha Gellhorn Quotes About Life

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

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

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

Martha Gellhorn Quotes About War

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

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

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

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

Martha Gellhorn Quotes About People

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

All politicians are bores and liars and fakes. I talk to people. — 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

[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

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

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

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

Martha Gellhorn Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

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

Life Lessons by Martha Gellhorn

1. Martha Gellhorn was an American journalist who showed great courage and determination in her reporting, often in dangerous and difficult circumstances. She taught us to never give up on our goals and to always stand up for what we believe in, no matter the cost.
2. Gellhorn also showed us the importance of having a strong moral compass and staying true to our values. She was an advocate for justice and equality, and she was never afraid to speak out against injustice and oppression.
3. Finally, Gellhorn's career reminds us to never stop learning and growing. She was an avid traveler and explorer, and her curiosity and passion for knowledge were an inspiration to many.