Conor O'Clery > Quotes

“A popular anecdote described a dog praising perestroika, saying, “My chain is a little longer, the dish is further away, but I can now bark all I want.”
― Conor O'Clery, Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union

“Pravda and Izvestia translated as “truth” and “news,” and cynics would quip that “in the Truth there is no news, and in the News there is no truth.”
― Conor O'Clery, Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union

“saw in him a product of a distinct, family oriented Irish American community in New Jersey. “There’s a whole containment thing there, a whole personality, a very identifiable, separate Irish existence,” he”
― Conor O'Clery, The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune

“Logic cannot argue with ideology”
― Conor O'Clery, The Shoemaker and his Daughter

“During a visit to Russia just days before Gorbachev’s resignation, U.S. secretary of state James Baker marvels at how, in all his meetings, one theme is uniform: “the intense desire to satisfy the United States.”
― Conor O'Clery, Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union

“There he had an epiphany. He concluded that the sole purpose of the Iron Curtain was to prevent Soviet citizens knowing what was on the other side, as it would be too much for them to endure.”
― Conor O'Clery, Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union

“Gorbachev, the charming and sophisticated world statesman, can turn the air blue with his profanity. Yeltsin, the hard-drinking, backwoods Siberian, regarded as a buf foon in many international circles, never uses swear words and intensely dislikes those who do.”
― Conor O'Clery, Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union

“It was not the philanthropist that deserved praise, he believed, but those who had the position, the ability, and the vision to do good things with the funds.”
― Conor O'Clery, The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune

“Gorbachevian, faithfully reflecting our chairman’s inconsistency, timidity, love of half measures and semi-decisions.”
― Conor O'Clery, Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union

“Was there perhaps a fable or parable that he might tell to a grandchild about what has happened in his country? Koppel asks. “Here is a fable that I learned some years ago,” replies Gorbachev. “A young ruler wanted to rule in a more humane way in his kingdom. And he asked the views of the wise men. And it took ten years to bring twenty volumes of advice. He said, ‘When am I going to read all that? I have to govern my country.’ Ten years later they brought him just ten volumes of advice. He said that is still too much. Five years later he was brought just one volume. But by then twenty-five years have passed and he was on his deathbed. And one of the wise men said, ‘All that is here can be summarized in a simple formula—people are born, people suffer, and people die.”
― Conor O'Clery, Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union

“I was never required to remain longer than five years in any of my postings: London, Moscow, Washington, Beijing and New York. I did not consider staying permanently in any of the overseas cities I lived in, much as my life was enriched by contact with different customs and languages, and new and lasting friendships. I never really left Ireland. There was never a year that I did not return for several weeks... I say this on good authority - Ireland is the most desirable place to live on the planet, recent economic turmoil notwithstanding.”
― Conor O'Clery, May You Live In Interesting Times

“It was a good time to be an American on the make in Western Europe.”
― Conor O'Clery, The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune

“Wealth brings responsibilities,' said Feeney. 'People have to determine themselves whether they feel an obligation to use some of their wealth to improve life for their fellow human beings...”
― Conor O'Clery

“Journalism will increasingly play a key role in informing the world's population about the causes and consequences of global warming: analysing the reports of scientists, including the alarmists and sceptics among them; investigating the influence of oil and coal industries on government policies; exploring the measures needed to save future generations from the looming disasters of extreme weather and world food shortages; and above all, as in any war, going to the "conflict zones" to carry out one of the basic tasks of journalism - reporting the impact of great events, in this case climate change, on ordinary people's lives. It will mean chronicling a gigantic struggle with nature, and a force that threatens to destabilise societies across the world in decades to come.”
― Conor O'Clery, May You Live In Interesting Times

“There is a Chinese saying, 'May you live in interesting times'. It is of course a curse.”
― Conor O'Clery, May You Live In Interesting Times

“Chuck Feeney and his team were aggressive, self-confident, and borderline legal.”
― Conor O'Clery, The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune