Robert Fisk Quotes

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  • The bin Laden I met each time was in a simple Saudi white robe, with a simple, cheap kafiya and very cheap plastic sandals. But a videotape released before September 11, which I saw on Lebanese television, had him in a gold embroidered robe. When I saw this, I thought, whoa, has this guy changed? I wouldn't have imagined him ever appearing in such golden robes when I met him.

    Simple   White   Guy  
    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.
  • Some of the guys in the Northern Alliance are war criminals. One of the Northern Alliance commanders ran a slave girl network in Kabul in 1994. Remember that there was a period when every woman on the streets was at risk of being raped. This was the Northern Alliance period of glory.

    Girl   War   Guy  
    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.
  • Why is it that we go to immense lengths getting the Serbs who were responsible for the massacre of 7,000 at Srbrenica - that's slightly more than the total figure for New York - and we take them to a tribunal in The Hague, and one after another, we arraign them, try them, convict them, and punish them in front of the world, but no plans have been brought forward to get bin Laden and his friends and put them on trial?

    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.
  • At the end of the day, Osama bin Laden's interest is not Washington and New York, it's the Middle East. He wants Saudi Arabia. He wants to get rid of the House of Saud. There's a great deal of resentment, even inside the royal family, at the continued military presence of the United States there.

    Source: progressive.org
  • And it's true, you hear things in Damascus and, after a few hours, the human double-take stops operating.

  • Everyone outside the Roman Empire was called a barbarian. Everyone outside Obama’s empire is called a terrorist.

  • In one way, I fear all Damascus is a dungeon. Or do you have to live here to appreciate that?

  • I was very struck by the fact that Colin Powell said he would produce evidence of Osama bin Laden fault and then never produced it. Then Tony Blair produced a document of seventy paragraphs, but only the last nine referred to the World Trade Center, and they were not convincing. So we have a little problem here: If they're guilty, where is the evidence? And if we can't hear the evidence, why are we going to war?

    War   World   Problem  
    Source: progressive.org
  • Bin Laden is not well read and he's not sophisticated, but he will have worked out very coldly what America would do.

    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.
  • The [Israelis] believed - they were possessed of an absolute certainty and conviction - that 'terrorists' were in Chatila. How could I explain to them that the terrorists had left, that the terrorists had worn Israeli uniforms, that the terrorists had been sent into Chatila by Israeli officers, that the victims of the terrorists were not Israelis but Palestinians and Lebanese?

  • I don't know what happens if they get bin Laden. I'm much more interested in what happens if they don't get bin Laden.

    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. December 1, 2001.
  • Fundamentalism is not bred in poverty. There are plenty of poor countries in the world that don't have violence because amid the poverty there is a kind of justice and in some countries a democracy.

    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.
  • I've never seen a single demonstration in Pakistan, in the streets of Gaza, in the West Bank, in which the people have come out with signs saying, "Please give us better roads. Please give us new prenatal clinics. Please give us a new sewage system." I'm sure they'd like those things, but it's not what they demand in the demonstrations. In the demonstrations, they talk about justice, they talk about an end to Israeli occupation.

    Justice   People   Giving  
    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.
  • How could believers, people who regard themselves as true Muslims, get on those planes, quoting the words of God delivered through the Prophet to themselves, knowing they were going to kill innocent people? They saw the other passengers on the plane. They could see the woman with her little daughter. They saw people making phone calls to their wives or their husbands. They knew who they were killing.

    Daughter   Husband   Wife  
    Source: progressive.org
  • The violence stems from injustice, because people feel they have been treated unfairly in the Middle East, whether that means military occupation, starvation under U.N. sanctions, whether it means that they have a dictatorship imposed on them, propped up by the West. This is why people turn to violence, because they have no other avenue left.

    Military   Mean   People  
    Source: progressive.org
  • I was very struck by the fact that Colin Powell said he would produce evidence and then never produced it. Then Tony Blair produced a document of seventy paragraphs, but only the last nine referred to the World Trade Center, and they were not convincing. So we have a little problem here: If they're guilty, where is the evidence? And if we can't hear the evidence, why are we going to war?

    War   World   Littles  
    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. December 1, 2001.
  • Bin Laden was constantly revolving in his mind the fact that he had got rid of the Russians; therefore, the Americans can be got rid of, too. And where better than in the country where he knows how to fight?

    Country   Fighting   Mind  
    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. December 1, 2001.
  • U.S. journalists I don't think are very courageous. They tend to go along with the government's policy domestically and internationally. To question is seen as being unpatriotic, or potentially subversive.

    The Progressive Interview with Matthew Rothschild, July 1, 1998.
  • I don't like the definition 'war correspondent'. It is history, not journalism, that has condemned the Middle East to war. I think 'war correspondent' smells a bit, reeks of false romanticism: it has too much of the whiff of Victorian reporters who would view battles from hilltops in the company of ladies, immune to suffering, only occasionally glancing towards the distant pop-pop of cannon fire.

    War   Thinking   Views  
    "The Great War for Civilization". Book by Robert Fisk, 2005.
  • It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.

    "Robert Fisk, Injured in Line of Duty" by Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. December 10, 2001.
  • The sheer violence of it, the howl of air raid sirens and the air-cutting fall of the missiles carried its own political message; not just to President Saddam but to the rest of the world. We are the superpower, those explosions said last night. This is how we do business.

    Fall   Cutting   Night  
    "Bubbles of fire tore into the sky above Baghdad" by Robert Fisk, www.independent.co.uk. March 21, 2003.
  • Even my landlord, who is a moderate Lebanese guy, says, "But bin Laden says what we think." These people believe that bin Laden is being targeted not because of the World Trade Center and Washington; they are not convinced by the evidence that has been produced. They believe he's being targeted because he tells the truth.

    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.
  • Individuals in various countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia listen to the tapes of bin Laden. They gather in groups of four or five. They feel they want to do something to express their support for what they've heard. The idea that they were taking orders is a particularly Western idea.

    Country   Egypt   Order  
    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. December 1, 2001.
  • In just one year in Bosnia, thirty of my colleagues died. There is a little Somme waiting for all innocent journalists.

    Years   Waiting   Bosnia  
    "The Great War for Civilization". Book by Robert Fisk, 2005.
  • Colleagues will malign you if you're a moderately successful journalist.

  • Wasn't Saddam destroyed? Wasn't Gaddafi liquidated? Didn't Milosevic go to the Hague? All true. But Stalin survived. Kim Jong-un isn't doing too badly, either - though that's probably because he actually has nuclear weapons, as opposed to Iran which might or might not be trying to acquire them and thus remains on the Israeli-American target list.

    Iran   Trying   Nuclear  
  • Bin Laden was very keen to point out to me that his forces had fought the Americans in Somalia. He also wanted to talk about how many mullahs in Pakistan were putting up posters saying, "We follow bin Laden." He even produced a sort of Kodak set of snapshots of graffiti supporting him.

    Interview with Matthew Rothschild, progressive.org. November 30, 2001.
  • And I think, in the end, that is the best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority - all authority - especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.

    "The Great War for Civilization". Book by Robert Fisk, 2005.
  • A businessman admits that he 'let go' an employee because he was a Sunni Muslim. You simply have to look after yourself, he explains. I am shocked, like a good Westerner should be.

  • Obama, who is becoming more and more preacher-like, wants to be the Punisher-in-Chi ef of the Western World, the Avenger-in-Chie f. There is something oddly Roman about him. ... The lesser races must be civilized and they must be punished... Everyone outside the Roman Empire was called a barbarian. Everyone outside Obama’s empire is called a terrorist.

    Race   World   Want  
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We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 70 quotes from the Writer Robert Fisk, starting from July 12, 1946! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!

Robert Fisk

  • Born: July 12, 1946
  • Occupation: Writer