Frederick Forsyth > Quotes

“there is no collective guilt,...guilt is individual, like salvation.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“… Shannon’s fingers itched to smash the man in the face. Inside his head he kept telling himself,
Keep cool, baby, absolutely cool.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War

“Moonlight turns even the most civilised man into a primitive.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“A journalist should never join the Establishment, no matter how tempting the blandishments. It is our job to hold power to account, not join it.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

“...a woman of quite bovine stupidity and potato-like contours...”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Deceiver

“He said that it was not his job to ensure that his soldiers died for their country. It was his job to make sure the other poor bastards died for theirs. Understand?”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Fist of God

“in police work ninety-nine percent of the effort is routine, unspectacular enquiry, checking and double-checking, laboriously building up a web of parts until the parts become a whole, the whole becomes a net, and the net finally encloses the criminal with a case that will not just make headlines but stand up in court. He”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“From the anarchists of tsarist Russia to the IRA of 1916, from the Irgun and the Stern Gang to the EOKA in Cyprus, from the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, the CCC in Belgium, the Action Directe in France, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction again in Germany, the Rengo Sekigun in Japan, through to the Shining Path in Peru to the modern IRA in Ulster or the ETA in Spain, terrorism came from the minds of the comfortably raised, well-educated, middle-class theorists with a truly staggering personal vanity and a developed taste for self-indulgence.”
― Frederick Forsyth, Avenger

“The hatred of your country is not because it attacks theirs; it is because it keeps theirs safe. Never seek popularity. You can have supremacy or be loved but never both. What is felt toward you is ten percent genuine disagreement and ninety percent envy. Never forget two things! No man can ever forgive his protector. There is no loathing that any man harbors more intense than that toward his benefactor.”
― Frederick Forsyth, Avenger

“It is always tempting to wonder what would have happened if … or if not. Usually it is a futile exercise, for what might have been is the greatest of all the mysteries.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“People had Jewish friends, good friends; Jewish employers, good employers; Jewish employees, hard workers. They obeyed the laws, they didn’t hurt anyone. And here was Hitler saying they were to blame for everything. ‘So when the vans came and took them away, people didn’t do anything. They stayed out of the way, they kept quiet. They even got to believing the voice that shouted the loudest. Because that’s the way people are, particularly the Germans. We’re a very obedient people. It’s our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. It enables us to build an economic miracle while the British are on strike, and it enables us to follow a man like Hitler into a great big mass grave.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“one can forgive even what they did. But one can never forget.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“Yessir. A crutch, like one-legged men always have.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“To understand everything is to forgive everything.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“To understand everything is to forgive everything.’ When one can understand the people, their gullibility and their fear, their greed and their lust for power, their ignorance and their docility to the man who shouts the loudest, one can forgive. Yes, one can forgive even what they did. But one can never forget. There”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“Vive la mort, vive la guerre, vive le sacre mercenaire”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War

“There are some men whose crimes surpass comprehension and therefore forgiveness, and here is the real failure. For they are still among us,”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“With terrorists, whether al-Fatah or Black September or the new, supposedly religious breed, the rage and the hatred come first.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Kill List

“There are several ways of making quick money but in the general list, writing a novel rates well below robbing a bank.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

“They were all copies of originals made by the British Admiralty, and the best in the world.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Devil's Alternative

“But the up-front reason is that he was reclaiming rightful Iraqi territory. Look, it happens all over the world. India took Goa, China took Tibet, Indonesia has taken East Timor. Argentina tried for the Falklands. Each time, the claim is retaking a chunk of rightful territory. It’s very popular with the home crowd, you know.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Fist of God

“There is a French adage, “To understand everything is to forgive everything.” When one can understand the people, their gullibility and their fear, their greed and their lust for power, their ignorance and their docility to the man who shouts the loudest, one can forgive. Yes, one can forgive even what they did. But one can never forget.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“When one can understand the people, their gullibility and their fear, their greed and their lust for power, their ignorance and their docility to the man who shouts the loudest, one can forgive.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“The most frills-free airliner cannot compare with the rear of a C-130. No soundproofing, no heating, no pressurization and certainly no trolley service. The Tracker knew it would never get quieter but it would become savagely cold as the air thinned. Nor is the rear leak-proof. Despite the oxygen-delivering mask on his face, the place by now stank of kerosene and oil.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Kill List

“It is strange how people always speak quietly in the darkness before dawn.”
― Frederick Forsyth, No Comebacks

“A journalist should never join the Establishment, no matter how tempting the blandishments. It is our job to hold power to account, not join it. In a world that increasingly obsesses over the gods of power, money and fame, a journalist and a writer must remain detached, like a bird on a rail, watching, noting, probing, commenting but never joining. In short, an outsider.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

“The Jackal was perfectly aware that in 1963 General de Gaulle was not only the President of France; he was also the most closely and skilfully guarded figure in the Western world. To assassinate him, as was later proved, was considerably more difficult than to kill President John F. Kennedy of the United States. Although the English killer did not know it, French security experts who had through American courtesy been given an opportunity to study the precautions taken to guard the life of President Kennedy had returned somewhat disdainful of those precautions as exercised by the American Secret Service. The French experts rejection of the American methods was later justified when in November 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas by a half-crazed and security-slack amateur while Charles de Gaulle lived on, to retire in peace and eventually to die in his own home.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“partly by tips reaching their head offices from those numerous radio hams who like to listen to maritime radio talk.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Devil's Alternative

“Yevgeni Krilov knew he was in a room with the richest man in Russia, possibly the world. No one did a ruble’s worth of business in Russia without paying a percentage fee to the supreme boss, albeit through a complex network of shell companies and front men.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Fox