Selected Quotations, Authors with names starting D

"I pleaded with him: 'Don't support her [Thatcher]. I know more about South America than you do, Michael. I know more about military technology than you do. His [Michael Foot, leader of the Opposition] retort was: 'Tam, I know more about fascism than you do.'"

"Mein Ziel ist es, Völker zu einen und Nationen zusammenzuführen" EP Conference, Rome 28/11/90.

"I feel there is a need not simply to examine one event [in the Dirty War] but to see the conflict against the history of Northern Ireland - and to provide the reader with an opportunity to see the totality of the issue rather than the selective history which both communities in Northern Ireland exploit to perpetuate the prejudice that is central to much of the dirty war." p. 481

"It is no longer about massive street confrontations between the mobs and the security forces, or between the two communities, or large-scale gun battles in the ghettos of Belfast. The was is now won or lost in the 'game' which involves the use of agents and double agents, the placing of high-definition surveillance equipment, the bugging of weapons and explosives in terrorist dumps and the effectiveness of propaganda." p. 479

"The tendency of both sides [is] to pretend that it does not exist, as if they are players in a game which they prefer to keep secret even to its spectators." p. 376

PIRA member: "This is a war that has to be played in the shadows because of its nature and the need for double-think and deception." p. 376.

"Over 100 members of the [UDR] have been convicted of serious offences including murder, attempted murder, causing explosions and having explosive substances." p. 220.

"From its birth the UDR did not introduce tight enough controls to ensure that prospective recruits were not members of paramilitary groupings .. dual membership of the UDR and UDA was acceptable to the military authorities." p. 210.

High-ranking PIRA member: "In South Armagh [the IRA] do their own thing .. They don't concern themselves with the niceties of politics or propaganda." p. 167.

"In the murky world of espionage and counter-terrorism the edges of public morality become frayed and blurred." p. 94.

"This aspect of the war [the planting of false information by double agents] is like a room of mirrors, not just for us [PIRA] but also for the Army." p. 74.

"The IRA indulges in moral indignation when a rioter is struck with a plastic bullet. It constantly alleged that its members are 'roughed up' during interrogation. It cites the techniques of torture used on selected people at the outset of internment which caused the British government to be censured by the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. How can it make such condemnations when it treats human beings so cruelly, when it expresses such disdain for the sanctity of human life and sadistically prepares victims for the summary extinction of life?" p. 362.

Conor Cruise O'Brien on the Irish Government and General Order Number 8 from the IRA's Green Book: "As long as the security forces have to fight the IRA without the aid of internment [on both sides of the border they are going to bend the law. There is no such thing as a dirty war on one side only."

He was a product of the inevitable, and seemingly endless, violence in Ireland, from which none of the combatants emerges morally unscathed. p. xxvii

.. families were steeped in such a culture [of hatred for the system controlling his life]: it offered them a focus for the discontentment they felt towards a state which was denying them as they perceived it an expression of their identity. This gave young minds the impetus for rebellion and sowed the seeds of conflict within them. pp. 4-5.

The IRA was militarily unprepared for the attacks on Catholic areas. Having taken the gun out of Irish politics they sold their weapons to Welsh nationalist groupings in Britain. p.10 (1969).

It was apparent that instead of defending Catholics [the IRA] had been too busy moving towards a Marxist philosophy designed to exploit the civil rights protests int he interests of working-class solidarity .. Those republicans who recognised the antipathy towards the IRA in August 1969 joined defence committees - with a view to resurrecting the fortunes of republicanism ..
Several members of the IRA who observed this development quickly assumed important roles withing the defence organisations, seeing them as means of establishing a new IRA which did not necessarily possess a Marxist philosophy .. and return to its basic policy of physical-force politics .. The Catholic Church seemed prepared to offer tacit support to this new breed of republican formed from the romantic nationalist tradition. Both the church and the Southern Irish Government were frightened by the leftward shift in IRA politics in the 1960s and were keen to see this new grouping emerge within the defence organisations. p. 12.

The concept of armed struggle in defence of Catholics, and to achieve the right to political self-determination, was taught as a morally sustainable doctrine. .. The Church, compromised by its past, encouraged the growth of the new IRA. Some priests even provided the Provisionals with assistance and transportation. p. 21.

'Republican movement' is a euphemism to cloak the illegality of all those proscribed IRA organisations which come under that umbrella term, such as Na Fianna Eireann, the IRA and Cumann na mBann (the women's grouping). It is not unlawful to be a republican or to express the republican aspiration that Ireland should be unified. Therefore members of those organisations which are illegal use the term 'republican movement' to mask their true affiliations. p. 24.
The term is broadly used to define all the groupings, the IRA included, who shape and promote the republican ideal of a United Ireland, with the specification that the 'armed struggle' of the IRA is central achieving that ideal. Therefore the umbrella term 'republican movement' is politically and intrinsically linked to the IRA .. they are all part of the 'war effort'. Sinn Fein is the political cutting edge and the IRA the Sword of Damocles. p. 171.

'IF troops were coming into the area to search for weapons or explosives, we would engage them with an impromptu riot so that the IRA could get the guns and gelignite out of the district .. We would also be told to get into the crowd to stop a riot in progress or stop one taking place .. for occasions when the IRA was planning an operation in the area and didn't want too much military heat .. Rioting was as much part of the armed struggle as anything else. It brought out excesses by the army which was good for our propaganda.' Joe Doherty, p. 30.

[Perception of HMGNI in 1970] Loyalist guns were for killing Catholics and not the overthrow of the state, whereas IRA weaponry posed a real threat to the Protestant/Unionist edifice. The acceptance of this thesis by the British Army determined their view that the terrorist threat was in the Catholic community. p. 32.

[In 1970], the Irish Army was secretly providing military training [to the IRA] in parts of the South. p. 35.

The word 'sympathiser' has several connotations: people who vocally support the IRA; people who raise funds; who procure arms; who secretly assist the IRA by providing a safe haven for wanted terrorists.

Such are the vagaries of undercover operations in Northern Ireland that even senior RUC figures are required to give undertakings before they request information on elite military grouping. p. 187.

The British are protagonists in a developing conflict which has tied their troops into urban warfar, occasionally exposed them to international criticism for undemocratic practices, brought them to the Court of Human Rights, and damaged British interests in North America. p. 206.

Benjamin Disraeli

"The possibility of incompetence springs in large measure from the unfortunate if unavoidable side-effects of creating armies and navies. For the most part these tend to produce a levelling down of human capability, at once encouraging to the mediocre but cramping to the gifted."

Officer recruiting: "In their eagerness to drum up applicants these calls to arms attempt the mental contortion of presenting the services as a classless society in which the officers nevertheless remain gentlemen." p.20.

"Discussion of leadership is so often overloaded with vague but emotive ideas that is one is hard put to it to nail the concept down. . . . One comes to the simple truth that leadership is no more than exercising an influence upon others that they tend to act in concert towards achieving a goal which they might not have achieved so readily had they been left to their own devices.

The ingredients which bring about this agreeable state of affairs are many and varied. At the most superficial level they are believed to include such factors as voice, stature and appearance, an impression of omniscience, trustworthiness, sincerity and bravery. At a deeper and rather more important level, leadership depends on a proper understanding of the needs and opinions of those one hopes to lead, and the context in which the leadership occurs. It also depends on good timing. Hitler, who was neither omniscient, trustworthy nor sincere, whose stature was unremarkable and whose appearance verged on the repellent, understood these rules and exploited them to full advantage. The same may be said of many good comedians."

"The Communist revolution, conducted in the name of doing away with classes, has resulted in the most complete authority of any single new class. Everything else is a sham and illusion." [The New Class]

"Ideology in the Soviet Union is both dead, and very much alive! Dead at the level of faith; alive as an indispensible rationale of policy." (12/79)

"In thirty years, everything will be changed in Russia - its economic and social relations with the West, its government and party structure. The spirit inside the party will change. I believe democracy will come to Russia ... it has to come. It cannot be stopped." (1/5/70)

"To plan one’s life is an optimistic folly - it’s ambushes all the way." President of Royal Academy

Sir Philip Dowson

"That they should have done this to me after I have worked to cooperate with the Soviet Union is the great tragedy of my life." On 1968 invasion.

"Perestroika was objectively and subjectively inevitable. It addresses problems that have matured in the entire socialist community, which is why I welcome and support it. It has a deep underlying connection with the questions which arose in our country 20 years ago, modified naturally - it was a long time ago - by conditions of place and time." 09.01.1988

"For us she is not the Iron Lady. She is the kind, dear Mrs Thatcher." (1990)

"We have had twenty years of economic stagnation, sterility and incalculable moral loss." Published text of speech at Bologna University, 13.11.1988

"Socialism with a human face must function again for a new generation. We have been too long in the darkness. Once already we have been in the light - and we want it again." Addressing Wenceslas Square crowds on 24.11.89

"Die Welt (die Bühne somit, die diese Welt bedeutet) steht für mich als ein Ungeheures da, als ein Rätsel an Unheil, das hingenommen werden muß, vor dem es jedoch kein Kapitulation geben darf."

"Wir machen, was uns das Gewissen vorschreibt."
"Die Versuchbarkeit des Menschens."

"We normally count only the two great wars of our own century as "world wars," but what this phrase means in practice is a war in which all the great powers of the time are involved. By that criterion, there have been six world wars in modern history: the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648, the War of the Spanish Succession 1702-1714, the Seven Years War of 1756-63, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars of 1791-1814 and the two World Wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945." War, (1985)

"If you go to war, like my friends in 45 Commado are currently undertaking in Afghanistan, to defend the ideals of the rest of us, you have a right to expect that, if you break your body, physicall or mentally, that the damage will be repaired. The employer has a legal and moral obligaton to look after all injuries, whether physical or psychiatric."