Quotes from Oriana Fallaci

I was a little girl fighting as a partisan against Nazi-Fascism.

Have you ever thought that war is a madhouse and that everyone in the war is a patient?

I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger.

How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did? He committed suicide!

To speak of oneself means to lay bare one's own soul, expose it like a body to the sun. To lay bare one's own soul is not at all like taking off one's brassiere on a crowded beach!

Alas, nothing reveals man the way war does. Nothing so accentuates in him the beauty and ugliness, the intelligence and foolishness, the brutishness and humanity, the courage and cowardice, the enigma.

Wojtyla was a warrior, who did more to end the Soviet Union than even America.

When you have been born in a war like me, living in a war as a child, when you have been in wars as a war correspondent all your life - trust me! You develop a form of fatalism; you are always ready to die.

Is it right to shoot the poor prostitute or a woman who is unfaithful to her husband, or a man who loves another man?

I know ours is a world made by men for men, their dictatorship is so ancient it even extends to language.

I didn't want to kill a man. I'm not capable of killing a man. I wanted to kill a tyrant.

I have never met a man more shy than Clark Gable. He was so shy, you couldn't make him talk.

Without Khomeini, we would not be where we are. What a pity that, when pregnant with him, his mother did not choose to have an abortion.

Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon.

You belong neither to God nor the state nor me. You belong to yourself and no one else.

America is God equals America equals Business equals America equals God.

I have reached the conclusion that those who have physical courage also have moral courage. Physical courage is a great test.

I must admit that I am not generous with weak people. It's not in my nature or in my personality. My parents were not generous with weak people, see?

You cannot survive if you do not know the past.

A civilization, a culture, cannot survive without passion, cannot be saved without passion.

Heroes can be sweet.

True power does not need arrogance, a long beard and a barking voice. True power strangles you with silk ribbons, charm and intelligence.

What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It's their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.

My soldier weapon is the weapon of truth.