Quotes by Robert Fisk

About Robert Fisk:

Robert Fisk is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. He has been Middle East correspondent of The Independent for more than twenty years, primarily based in Beirut. Fisk holds more British and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent and has been voted British International Journalist of the Year award seven times. He has published a number of books and reported on several wars and armed conflicts.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 ha...

Robert Fisk

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.

Robert Fisk

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.

Robert Fisk

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

Robert Fisk

I do not make stories up, full stop.

Robert Fisk

Colleagues will malign you if you're a moderately successful journalist.

Robert Fisk

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

Robert Fisk

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...

Robert Fisk

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

Robert Fisk

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 ...

Robert Fisk

I've never been embedded with American soldiers or British soldiers or Iraqi soldiers or any other.

Robert Fisk

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 sol...

Robert Fisk

One of the reasons why I think people have gone from reading mainstream newspapers to the Internet is because they realize they're being lied to.

Robert Fisk

The biggest problem I have in journalism is being quoted or misquoted and then being asked to defend something I haven't said.

Robert Fisk

Clinton impressed Assad: a young man who appeared to want to be neutral in the Arab-Israeli dispute - an illusion of course, but that's what Assad thought.

Robert Fisk

Bin Laden always wanted to get rid of Mubarek and Ben Ali and Gaddafi and so on, claiming that they were all infidels working for America, and in fact, it was millions of ordinary people who peacefully, more or less - certainly in the case of Tunisia...

Robert Fisk

There is nothing so satisfying as to be shot at without effect.

Robert Fisk

Equal time is not necessary when dealing with evil. Nazis do not merit equal or fair treatment.

Robert Fisk

One of the comforts of firing a big gun during a siege must be the satisfaction of watching the results at long range. Inside a tank or behind an M107, a smudge of smoke against a building can be marked off against a map coordinate. The blood and sha...

Robert Fisk

It is always an eerie experience to sit among Bashar al-Assad's soldiers.

Robert Fisk

Author Bio

  • NameRobert Fisk
  • DescriptionEnglish writer and journalist
  • AliasesFisking
  • BornJuly 12, 1946
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionJournalist; Historian; Writer