Robert Fisk Quotes & Sayings

“Tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the 'liberating' kind.”

“The word 'democracy' and the name of Assad do not blend very well in much of Syria.”

“The Syrian army is tired of corruption. It is tired of party nepotism. It is becoming very angry with those it blames for the war.”

“The Americans may think they have 'liberated' Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves - they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty - seem to have a different idea what liberation means.”

“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.”

“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.”

“President Bush will come here and there will be new 'friends' of America to open a new relationship with the world, new economic fortunes for those who 'liberated' them.”

“The dead cannot speak. But hitherto unknown information has emerged from the confidential archives of the Syrian presidency and foreign ministry, published in a new book by Bouthaina Shaaban, who spent ten years as Hafez's interpreter and is still an adviser to his son Bashar.”

“I'm not sure whether I've been happy. After my last book tour, I sat on my balcony with a cup of tea. I thought: 'You can't rewind the movie. I've spent more than half my life in the Middle East. There have been great moments of horror and depression and loneliness.'”

“When I visited Syrian special forces along the front lines, I was given extraordinary amounts of detail. They gave me the code numbers for the various positions they've got, told me where the rebels were - about 800 meters away in a forest. I met soldiers who had been wounded but were still serving.”