Oriana Fallaci famous quotes

The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Giving Up #Civilization #Culture

The Muslims refuse our culture and try to impose their culture on us. I reject them, and this is not only my duty toward my culture-it is toward my values, my principles, my civilization.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Civilization #Trying #Culture

America's a hard school, I know, but hard schools make excellent graduates.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#School #America #United States

Hearing him speak is so fun, reassuring I dare say. You can say all you like about Sihanouk: that he's an atrocious liar, a madman, a fraud, a swashbuckler, an international blot. You may think that, but you cannot deny how in this age in which the political arena seems to generate only dull, obtuse and boring characters with no imagination, he's a kind of miracle.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Fun #Liars #Character

I defend Israel's right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Israel

With our progress we have destroyed our only weapon against tedium: that rare weakness we call imagination.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Imagination #Progress #Weapons

I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Miracle #Way #Use

I'm going to show you the real New York - witty, smart, and international - like any metropolis. Tell me this: where in Europe can you find old Hungary, old Russia, old France, old Italy? In Europe you're trying to copy America, you're almost American. But here you'll find Europeans who immigrated a hundred years ago - and we haven't spoiled them. Oh, Gio! You must see why I love New York. Because the whole world's in New York....
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Witty #New York #Real

Why do the people humiliate themselves by voting? I didn't vote because I have dignity. If I had closed my nose and voted for one of them, I would spit on my own face.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#People #Voting #Noses

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.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Leader #President #Sovereign

I don't even know if I will be around next year. My cancers are so bad that I think I've arrived at the end of the road. What a pity. I would like to live not only because I love life so much, but because I'd like to see the result of the trial. I do think I will be found guilty.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Cancer #Love Life #Thinking

Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Islamic #Europe #Doe

One day you and I will have to have a little talk about this business called love. I still don't understand what it's all about. My guess is that it's just a gigantic hoax, invented to keep people quiet and diverted. Everyone talks about love: the priests, the advertising posters, the literati, and the politicians, those of them who make love. And in speaking of love and offering it as a panacea for every tragedy, they would and betray and kill both body and soul.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Offering #People #Making Love

I'll impose upon you the same arrogance that was imposed on me, and on my mother, my grandmother, my grandmother's mother: all the way back to the first human born of another human being, whether he liked it or not. Probably, if he or she had been allowed to choose, he would have been frightened and answered: No, I don't want to be born. But no one asked their opinion, and so they were born and lived and died after giving birth to another human being who was not asked to choose, and that one did likewise, for millions of years, right down to us.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Mother #Years #Giving

And yet, or just for this reason, it's so fascinating to be a woman. It's an adventure that takes such courage, a challenge that's never boring. You'll have so many things to engage you if you're born a woman. To begin with, you'll have to struggle to maintain that if God exists he might even be an old woman with white hair or a beautiful girl. Then you'll have to struggle to explain that it wasn't sin that was born on the day when Eve picked an apple, what was born that day was a splendid virtue called disobedience.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Beautiful #Girl #Struggle

No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it's always the strongest, the cruellest, the least generous who win.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Winning #Escaping #Law

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

#Peace #War #Patient

To be good or bad doesn't count: life out in this world doesn't depend on that. It depends on a relation of forces based on violence. And survival is violence. You'll wear leather shoes because someone has killed a cow and skinned it to make leather.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Shoes #Survival #World

I've found what I was looking for, Child: what people call love between a man and a woman is a season. And if, at its flowering, this season is a feast of greenery, at its waning, it's only a heap of rotting leaves.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Children #Men #People

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

#States

Objectivity does not exist. The word is a hypocrisy which is sustained by the lie that the truth stays in the middle. No, sir: Sometimes truth stays on one side only.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Lying #Objectivity #Hypocrisy

A lot of women ask themselves why they should bring a child into the world? So that it will be hungry, so that it will be cold, so that it will be betrayed and humiliated, so that it will be slaughtered by war or disease? They reject the hope that its hunger will be satisfied, its cold warmed, that loyalty and respect will accompany it through life, that it will be a devote a life to the effort to eliminate war and disease.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Loyalty #Children #War

What's the point anyway — Of suffering, dying? It teaches us to live, boy. A man who does not struggle does not live, he survives.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Struggle #Boys #Men

I leave shreds of my soul on every experience,
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Soul

Physical courage is a great test.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Tests

If you put a pistol against my head and ask which I think is worse, Muslims or Mexicans, I'd have to think a moment, then I'd say the Muslims because they've broken my balls.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Thinking #Broken #Pistols

I am angry at the Jews for many things... If you want to take the example of America, how they hold the power, the economical power in so many ways, and the press and the other kind of stuff... I never realized how it happened and they came to control the media to that point. Why?
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Media #America #Want

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

#Husband #Men #Unfaithful

Love isn’t putting chain on someone who wants to struggle and is ready to die for it, love is letting him die in the way he’s chosen.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Struggle #Love Is #Want

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

#Strength #Courage #Umpires

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.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Mother #Pregnancy #Abortion

We are an age without leaders. We stopped having leaders at the end of the 20th century
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Leader #Age #Century

I no longer have the energy to get really angry, like I used to,
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Energy #Used #Get Real

War is something Arafat sends others to do for him. That is, the poor souls who believe in him. This pompous incompetent caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations, Clinton's mediation.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#War #Believe #Soul

The more democratic and open a society is, the more it's exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more it risks hijackings or massacres like the ones that took place for many years in Italy and Germany and other parts of Europe.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Country #Years #Europe

I've always disliked kamikazes, that is, people who commit suicide in order to kill others. Starting with the Japanese ones from World War II. I never considered them Pietro Miccas who torch the powder and go up with the citadel in order to block the arrival of the enemy troops at Torino. I never considered them soldiers.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Suicide #Block #War

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

#Men #Tyrants #Want

Glory is a heavy burden, a murdering poison, and to bear it is an art. And to have that art is rare.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Art #Bears #Poison

You cannot survive if you do not know the past.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Past

This Islam business kidnapped me.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Islam

I don't want to hear about my death.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Want

I am disgusted by the anti-Semitism of many Italians, of many Europeans.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Disgusted #Anti Semitism

I am known for a life spent in the struggle for freedom, and freedom includes the freedom of religion.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Struggle #Freedom Of Religion

I cry, sometimes, because I'm not 20 years younger, and I'm not healthy. But if I were, I would even sacrifice my writing to enter politics.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Writing #Sacrifice #Years

I am a danger to myself if I get angry.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Danger #Angry

Arafat contradicts himself every five minutes. He always plays the double-cross, lies even if you ask him what time it is.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Lying #Play #Double Standard

I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Book #Feels

I find it shameful that in nearly all the universities of Europe, Palestinian students sponsor and nurture anti-Semitism.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Europe #Students #Sponsors

I have expressed my opinion through the written word through my books, that is all.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Book #Opinion #Written Word

America's vulnerability comes precisely from its strength, its wealth, its power and its modernity. It's the usual story of the dog chasing its own tail.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Dog #America #Tails

Khomeini was not a puppet like Arafat or Qaddafi or the many other dictators I met in the Islamic world. He was a sort of Pope, a sort of king - a real leader.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Kings #Real #Islamic

I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. There must be some human truth that is beyond religion.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Atheist #Thinking #Atheism

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

#Warrior #America #Unions

When my father was arrested, we didn't know where they had him. My mother found him at the house of torture. It was called Villa Triste.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Mother #Father #House

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!
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Suicide #Asking #Remember

The increased presence of Muslims in Italy and in Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Loss #Europe #Islam

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

#Men #Shy #Mets

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

#Girl #Fighting #Littles

But to deny fate is arrogance, to declare that we are the sole shapers of our existence is madness;if you deny fate life becomes the series of missed opportunities, a regret for what never was and could have been, a remorse of what was not done and could have been done, and the present is wasted, twisted into another missed oppurtunity.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Regret #Fate #Opportunity

We do not understand these Americans who, like adolescents, always speak of sex, and who, like adolescents, all of a sudden have discovered that sex is good not only for procreating children.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Sex #Children #Speak

Listen: if I am a painter and I do your portrait, have I or haven't I the right to paint you as I want?
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Portraiture #Want #Portraits

America is God equals America equals Business equals America equals God.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#America #United States

Journalism is an extraordinary and terrible privilege. Not by chance, if you are aware of it, does it consume you with a hundred feelings of inadequacy. Not by chance, when I find myself going through an event or an important encounter, does it seize me like anguish, a fear of not having enough eyes and enough ears and enough brains to look and listen and understand like a worm hidden in the wood of history.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Eye #Feelings #Brain

I always introduce myself as an encyclopedia of defects which I do not deny. Why should I? It took me a whole life to build myself as I am.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Introducing #Deny #Should

You wear yourself out in the pursuit of wealth or love or freedom, you do everything to gain some right, and once it's gained you take no pleasure in it.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Gains #Wealth #Pleasure

Sometimes the dead are more alive than the living. And they can kill the living.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Death #Alive #Sometimes

In the legends that males have invented to explain life, the first human creature is a man named Adam. Eve arrives later, to give him pleasure and cause trouble. In the paintings that adorn churches, God is an old man with a beard, never an old woman with white hair. And all the heroes are males: from Prometheus who discovered fire to Icarus who tried to fly, on down to Jesus whom they call the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, almost as though the woman giving birth to him were an incubator or a wetnurse.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Jesus #Hero #Son

Henry Kissinger may have wished I had presented him as a combination of Charles DeGaulle and Disraeli, but I didn't....out of respect for DeGaulle and Disraeli. I described him as a cowboy because that is how he describes himself. If I were a cowboy I would be offended.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Cowboy #May #Would Be

Life is such an effort, Child. It's a war that is renewed each day, and its moments of joy are brief parentheses for which you pay a cruel price.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Children #War #Effort

There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Challenges #Faults #Moral

But here's what I've learned in this war, in this country, in this city: to love the miracle of having been born.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Inspirational #Country #War

If a man is a man and not a sheep in the flock, he has a survival instinct in him that leads him to fight even if he realizes he’s fighting in vain, even if he knows he will lose..
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Fighting #Men #Sheep

To have realized your dream makes you feel lost.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Success #Dream #Lost

You cannot govern, you cannot administrate, with an ignoramus.
-- Oriana Fallaci

I’ll parade with those who are alone like me. They exist. They are very few, but they exist. I’ll find them.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Parades

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

#Men #World #Language

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 phenomen. To the same degree that I do not understand power, I do understand those who oppose power, who criticize power, who contest power, especially those who rebel against power imposed by brutality.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Power #Leader #President

There are three points of view to everything - mine, yours, and the truth.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Views #Perspective #Three

Journalism combines adventure with culture.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Adventure #Culture #Journalism

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

#Voice #Long #Arrogance

Equality ... like freedom, exists only where you are now. Only as an egg in the womb are we all equal.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Equality #Eggs #Womb

Listening to someone talk isn't at all like listening to their words played over on a machine. What you hear when you have a face before you is never what you hear when you have before you a winding tape.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Listening #Faces #Tape

Instead of learned young people we have donkeys with University degrees. Instead of future leaders we have mollusks with expensive blue jeans and phony revolutionaries with ski masks. And do you know what? Maybe this is another reason why our Moslem invaders have such an easy game.
-- Oriana Fallaci

#Blue #Games #Jeans