John Gunther > Quotes

“All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast. ”
― John Gunther

“Intellectually, he is like interstellar space - a vast vacuum occasionally crossed by homeless, wandering clichés.”
― John Gunther, Inside U.S.A

“What is life? It departs covertly. Like a thief Death took him.”
― John Gunther, Death Be Not Proud

“Live while you live, then die and be done with.”
― John Gunther, Death Be Not Proud

“Yemen produces coffee, Egypt cotton, Iraq dates, Palestine oranges, and Syria trouble.”
― John Gunther, Inside Asia

“God was always there. He sat beside us during the doctors’ consultations, as we waited the long vigils outside the operating room, as we rejoiced in the miracle of a brief recovery, as we agonized when hope ebbed away, and the doctors confessed there was no longer anything they could do. They were helpless, and we were helpless, and in His way, God, standing by us in our hour of need, God in His infinite wisdom and mercy and loving kindness, God in all His omnipotence, was helpless too.”
― John Gunther, Death Be Not Proud

“إن الإنجليز إنما يعبدون بنك انجلترا ستة أيام في الأسبوع ويتوجهون في اليوم السابع إلى الكنيسة”
― John Gunther, Inside Europe Today

“Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was belief in facts.”
― John Gunther

“Maybe the next world will be a pleasanter place than this”
― John Gunther

“I wish we had loved Johnny more when he was alive. Of course we loved Johnny very much. Johnny knew that. Everybody knew it. Loving Johnny more. What does it mean, now?

Parents all over the earth who lost sons in the war have felt this kind of question, and sought an answer. To me, it means loving life more, being more aware of life, of one's fellow human beings, of the earth.

It means obliterating, in a curious but real way, the ideas of evil and hate and the enemy, and transmuting them, with the alchemy of suffering, into ideas of clarity and charity.

It means caring more and more about other people, at home and abroad, all over the earth. It means caring more about God.”
― John Gunther, Death Be Not Proud

“If a man's from Texas, he'll tell you. If he's not, why embarrass him by asking?”
― John Gunther

“God was always there. He sat beside us during the doctors’ consultations, as we waited the long vigils outside the operating room, as we rejoiced in the miracle of a brief recovery, as we agonized when hope ebbed away, and the doctors confessed there was nolonger anything they could do. They were helpless, and we were helpless, and in His way, God, standing by us in our hour of need, God in His infinite wisdom and mercy and loving kindness, God in all His omnipotence, was helpless too.”
― John Gunther, Death Be Not Proud

“(...) about one of his schools he said, "I would make the following criticisms. First, too much attention to marks. Second, too much religion. Third, no time for me to develop my own interests. Fourth, group discipline may be imposed unfairly".”
― John Gunther, Death Be Not Proud

“Mr. Roosevelt liked to be liked. He courted and wooed people. He had good taste, an affable disposition, and profound delight in people and human relationships. This was probably the single most revealing of all his characteristics; it was both a strength and a weakness, and is a clue to much. To want to be liked by everybody does not merely mean amiability; it connotes will to power, for the obvious reason that if the process is carried on long enough and enough people like the person, his power eventually becomes infinite and universal. Conversely, any man with great will to power and sense of historical mission, like Roosevelt, not only likes to be liked; he has to be liked, in order to feed his ego. But FDR went beyond this; he wanted to be liked not only by contemporaries on as broad a scale as possible, but by posterity. This, among others, is one reason for his collector's instinct. He collected himself—for history. He wanted to be spoken of well by succeeding generations, which means that he had the typical great man's wish for immortality, and hence—as we shall see in a subsequent chapter—he preserved everything about himself that might be of the slightest interest to historians. His passion for collecting and cataloguing is also a suggestive indication of his optimism. He was quite content to put absolutely everything on the record, without fear of what the world verdict of history would be.”
― John Gunther, Roosevelt In Retrospect: A Profile in History

“Talkativeness and charm are both, as is well-known, characteristics somewhat feminine; and they often add up to guile. Certainly there was a strong streak of the female in Roosevelt, though this is not to disparage his essential masculinity. Confidence in his own charm led him into occasional perilous adventures—almost as a woman may be persuaded with a long series of glittering successes behind her, to think she is irresistible forever and can win anybody's scalp.”
― John Gunther, Roosevelt In Retrospect: A Profile in History

“He had not recognized me, and thought I was some master he did not know.”
― John Gunther, Death Be Not Proud

“But let us turn back to the tragic events of February 6. The story of the riots may be briefly told. A riot in France is one of the most remarkable things in the world. The frenzied combatants maintain perfect discipline. Seventeen people were barbarously killed, and several thousand injured, but there was no fighting at all between about seven-thirty p.m. and nine, when everyone took time out for dinner. When it started, no one thought of revolution; it was just a nice big riot. Communists, royalists, Fascists, socialists, fought shoulder to shoulder under both red flag and tricolor against the police and Garde Mobile. The fighting stopped on the stroke of twelve, because the Paris Metro (underground) stops running at twelve-thirty, and no one wanted to walk all the way home. Bloody, bandaged, fighters and police jostled their way into the trains together. Promptly at seven-thirty next morning the fighting started again. – John Gunther, Inside Europe pg. 154-155”
― John Gunther, Inside Europe

“Charm has an occasional contrary concomitant, heartlessness. The virtuoso is so pleased by the way he produces his effects that he disregards the audience. Once Dorothy Thompson came in to see FDR after a comparatively long period of having been snubbed by the White House—although she had deserted Wilkie for Roosevelt during the campaign just concluded, and as a result had been fired from The New York Herald Tribune, the best job she ever had. Roosevelt greeted her with the remark, "Dorothy, you lost your job, but I kept mine—ha, ha!”
― John Gunther, Roosevelt In Retrospect: A Profile in History

“God was always there. He sat beside us during the doctors’ consultations, as we waited the long vigils outside the operating room, as we rejoiced in the miracle of a brief recovery, as we agonized when hope ebbed away, and the doctors confessed there was no longer anything they could do. They were
helpless, and we were helpless, and in His way, God, standing by us in our hour of need, God in His infinite wisdom and mercy and loving kindness, God in all His omnipotence, was helpless too.”
― John Gunther, Death Be Not Proud

“Past is tolerable if remote enough.”
― John Gunther, Death Be Not Proud

“If a man’s from Texas, he’ll tell you. If not, why embarrass him by asking”
― John Gunther, Inside U.S.A