Masha Gessen Quotes

Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.

We have not forgotten the occupier. We remain a resistance.

Insurgencies are nearly as old as warfare itself.

It's hard to fight the war when you've got to debate the worthiness of fighting it.

For we went, changing our country more often than our shoes In the class war, despairing When there was only injustice and no resistance

Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance.

Black people need some peace. White people need some peace. And we are going to have to fight. We're going to have to struggle. We're going to have to struggle relentlessly to bring about some peace, because the people that we're asking for peace, they are a bunch of megalomaniac warmongers, and they don't even understand what peace means.

At the moment of greatest love, there is greatest fear, and at the moment of enormous repression, there is resistance, and therefore a chance at revolutionary change.

When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.

Oh, but Masha, can’t you see? You are. An Ivan has come. That is like saying, Midnight has struck. It is time for bed, little one. You cannot have both. In war you must always choose sides. One or the other. Silver or black. Human or demon. If you try to be a bridge laid down between them, they will tear you in half.

Enemy-occupied territory - that is what this world is.

It is wrong to try to avoid the struggle against imperialism under the pretext that independence and revolution are important, but that peace is still more precious.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

We continue to resist the occupier militarily, culturally and by all means of the resistance.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.

But now with the living conditions deteriorating, and with the sure knowledge that we are slated for destruction, we have been transformed into an implacable army of liberation.

But it is neither cannon nor bayonet that will do the worst damage to this city. No, this place will remember the war against our government just as long as there are inhabitants here.

Blood alone moves the wheels of history.

In that first blow to the deaf walls of those who have everything, the blood of our people, our blood, ran generously to wash away injustice. To live, we die. Our dead once again walked the way of truth. Our hope was fertilized with mud and blood.

We shall not fight for the preservation of the enemy, which has laid waste with death and desolation the fields and hills of Ireland for 700 years.

If Scotland and America go to war, I'm afraid I've already sworn in.

We decry violence all the time in this country, but look at our history. We were born in a violent revolution, and we've been in wars ever since. We're not a pacific people.

Nobody knows through how many thousands of years fighting men have made a place for themselves while the weak and peaceable have gone to the wall.

The second song is called 'Easy As Life,' which really describes the complete conflict of the whole story, her struggle of being in love with the enemy and also being in love with her people.