Robert Fisk quotes - page 2

Robert Fisk was a renowned British journalist and author, celebrated for his extensive reporting from the Middle East. His in-depth analysis and firsthand accounts from conflict zones made him one of the most respected foreign correspondents of his generation. He was known for his fearless approach and commitment to uncovering the truth. Here are 44 of his quotes:

The New York Times "last month announced that the Syrian-supported Hizbollah resistance in Lebanon had 10,000 missiles that could fly to Tel Aviv and "leave in their wake devastation more terrible than anything Israel has ever known". The missiles are a myth – I travel the roads of southern Lebanon every two weeks and there are no such missiles, as the UN force there will confirm – but this doesn't matter.

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 soldiers who had been wounded but were still serving.

Robert Fisk

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

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

Robert Fisk

When you have a crime against humanity that is so awesome in scale and death, it is more than permissible to look around and say, who recently has been declaring war on the United States? Of course, the compass points straight to bin Laden.

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

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.

Robert Fisk

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

Robert Fisk

I do not make stories up, full stop.

Robert Fisk

When we journalists fail to get across the reality of events to our readers, we have not only failed in our job; we have also become a party to the bloody events that we are supposed to be reporting. If we cannot tell the truth about the shooting down of a civilian airliner - because this will harm 'our' side in a war or because it will cast one of our 'hate' countries in the role of victim or because it might upset the owner of our newspaper - then we contribute to the very prejudices that provoke wars in the first place. If we cannot blow the whistle on a navy that shoots civilians out of the sky, then we make future killings of the same kind as 'understandable' as Mrs Thatcher found this one. Delete the Americans' panic and incompetence - all of which would be revealed in the months to come - and pretend an innocent pilot is a suicidal maniac, and it's only a matter of time before we blow another airliner out of the sky. Journalism can be lethal.

Robert Fisk

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.

Robert Fisk

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

Robert Fisk

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.

Robert Fisk

Israel lost its war. Will Assad's enemies lose, too?

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 adviser to his son Bashar.

Robert Fisk

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

Robert Fisk

Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 11 September. If the United States invades Iraq, we should remember that.

Robert Fisk