Robert Harris Quotes

There is no such thing as a secret - not really, not in the modern world, not with photography and telegraphy and railways and newspaper presses. ~ Robert Harris

Rising up starkly over the snowy plain, and that the plebs were flocking out ~ Robert Harris

Nothing is more important to a nation than its history. It is the earth upon which any society stands. ~ Robert Harris

I make no claim to be a philosopher, but this much I have observed: that whenever a thing seems at its zenith, you may be sure its destruction has already started. ~ Robert Harris

The art of life is to deal with one's problems as they arise; rather than destoy your spirit by worrying about them too far in advance. ~ Robert Harris

I read a lot of bad books- books so bad that they aren't even published,which is quite a feat, when you consider what is published.
- The Ghost, Robert Harris. ~ Robert Harris

Nature has granted man no better gift than the shortness of life. The senses grow dull, the limbs are numb, sight, bearing, gait, even the teeth and alimentary organs die before we do, and yet this period is reckoned a portion of life. - Pg. 82 ~ Robert Harris

....let me tell you that the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end........Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith. ~ Robert Harris

In the absence of genius there is always craftsmanship. ~ Robert Harris

One gains a double benefit in writing about the past, conjuring up how things might have been, and at the same time acquiring a different perspective on the present. ~ Robert Harris

Then came a volley of colorful abuse, delivered in such an imperious voice, at at such a volume, that Terentia's distant ancestor, who had commanded the Roman line against Hannibal at Cannae a century and a half before, must surely have sat bolt upright in his tomb. ~ Robert Harris

From the subjective perspective, he may seem cruel, even wicked. But the glory of the man is to be found in the objective perspective. ~ Robert Harris

His scars and his tattoos were the medals of his lifetime. He was proud to wear them. ~ Robert Harris

He was a devoted follower of the teachings of Epicurus - "that pleasure is the beginning and end of living happily" - although I hasten to add that he was an Epicurean not in the commonly misunderstood sense, as a seeker after luxury, but in the true meaning, as a pursuer of what the Greeks call ataraxia, or freedom from disturbance. He consequently avoided arguments and unpleasantness of any kind (needless to say, he was unmarried) and desired only to contemplate philosophy by day and dine by night with his cultured friends. He ~ Robert Harris

Storytelling has a narcotic power. ~ Robert Harris

The likeness was stricking. Not exact, of course - no man ever looks exactly like his father - but there was something there, no doubt about it, even with the younger man's beard and straggling hair. Something in the cast of the eyes and the bone structure, perhaps, or in the play of the expression: a kind of ponderous agility, a genetic shadow that was beyond the skills of any actor. ~ Robert Harris

What is leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason ~ Robert Harris

In the spring, during the Festival of Flora, when Rome was crowded with visitors from all over Italy, Clodius's mob found itself for once outnumbered by ordinary citizens who despised their bullying tactics. Clodius himself was actually jeered at the theatre. Unused to anything other than adulation from the people, according to Atticus he looked around him in astonishment at the slow handclapping, taunts, whistles and obscene gestures, and realised - almost too late - that he was in danger of being lynched. He retreated hastily, and that was the beginning of the end of his domination, for the Senate now recognised how he could be beaten: by appealing over the heads of the ~ Robert Harris

I think a lot of us feel, when we look at the Dow Jones plunging, alienated - you do feel as if we're in the grip of some alien force that slipped human control. ~ Robert Harris

The only thing you can be sure of, Herr March, is that - whoever wins - still standing when the smoke of battle clears will be the banks of the cantons of Switzerland. ~ Robert Harris

I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power. ~ Robert Harris

And so we drifted towards calamity. At times, Cicero was shrewd enough to see it. "Can a constitution devised centuries ago to replace a monarchy, and based upon a citizens' militia, possibly hope to run an empire whose scope is beyond anything ever dreamed of by its framers? Or must the existence of standing armies and the influx of inconceivable wealth inevitably destroy our democratic system? ~ Robert Harris

The Spartan statesman Lycurgus, seven hundred years ago, is said to have observed: When falls on man the anger of the gods, First from his mind they banish understanding. Such was to be the fate of Caesar. I am sure Cicero was correct: he had gone mad. His success had made him vain, and his vanity had devoured his reason. ~ Robert Harris

But we must be careful not to do our enemies' work for them. To argue that to preserve our freedoms we must suspend our freedoms, that to safeguard elections we must cancel elections, that to defend ourselves from dictatorship we must appoint a dictator - what logic is this? We ~ Robert Harris

Jericho lowered himself carefully to his knees. He covered his eyes and moved his lips like all the others, but he had no faith in any of it. Faith in mathematics, yes; faith in logic, of course; faith in the trajectory of the stars, yes, perhaps. But faith in a God, Christian or otherwise? ~ Robert Harris

Down in the cellar the Gestapo were licensed to practice was the Ministry of Justice called 'heightened interrogation'. The rules had been drawn up by civilised men in warm offices and they stipulated the presence of a doctor. ~ Robert Harris

If one first gives himself to the Lord, all other giving is easy. ~ Robert Harris

What starts as gratitude quickly becomes dependency and ends as entitlement ~ Robert Harris

A crock of shit, Rick had called it. But actually this was worse. Shit, to quote Gore Vidal, has its own integrity. This was a crock of nothing. ~ Robert Harris

Working 14 hours a day until you're 55 and missing your kids growing up is not what I would consider a recipe for happiness. ~ Robert Harris

The library was destroyed years back. My father-in-law used to say nothing burned so well on a cold winter's night as a good book. ~ Robert Harris

Cut your manuscript ruthlessly but never throw anything away: it's amazing how often a discarded scene or description, which wouldn't fit in one place, will work perfectly later. ~ Robert Harris

Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them. ~ Robert Harris

Officially it was almost spring but someone had forgotten to pass the news on to winter. ~ Robert Harris

The most important thing in any endeavour is to get involved in the fight, and in that way learn what to do next. ~ Robert Harris

Against the alchemy of two naked bodies in a bed in the darkness, and against all the complex longings and attachments and commitments such intimacy might arouse, he had nothing with which to fight. ~ Robert Harris

Their souls were contagious ... Bloodsuckers, spiders and vampires: that was what Lenin called them. ~ Robert Harris

Where was the respect? The boys all looked like girls and the girls all looked like whores. Clearly, the country was already halfway in the shit. ~ Robert Harris

Unfortunately, freedom alone is not enough, by far. If there is a shortage of bread, a shortage of butter and fats, a shortage of textiles, and if housing conditions are bad, freedom will not carry you very far. It is very difficult, comrades, to live on freedom alone. ~ Robert Harris

Civilization was a relentless war that man was doomed to lose eventually. - Pg. 195 ~ Robert Harris

No one who follows their conscience ever does wrong. - Cardinal Vincent Benitez ~ Robert Harris

I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and put words together. ~ Robert Harris

As praetor, Cicero was expected to take in promising pupils from good families to study law with him, and in May, after the Senate recess, a new young intern of sixteen joined his chambers. This was Marcus Caelius Rufus from Interamnia, the son of a wealthy banker and prominent election official of the Velina tribe. Cicero agreed, largely as a political favor, to supervise the boy's training ~ Robert Harris

Tape is the archiving champ and has been for decades. Reliable, less expensive than disks and available in large-scale robotic systems that store petabytes. ~ Robert Harris

In the concealed darkness of the bag her fingers began to work her rosary, clumsily at first but with increasing dexterity - Push. Click. Slide. Press - ~ Robert Harris

A police state is a country run by criminals ~ Robert Harris

My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected. ~ Robert Harris

Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity. ~ Robert Harris

If I were convinced that any nation had made up its mind to dominate the world by fear of its force, I should feel that it must be resisted. Under such a domination, life for people who believe in liberty would not be worth living. But war is a fearful thing, and we must be very clear, before we embark on it, that it is really the great issues that are at stake, and that the call to risk everything in their defence, when all the consequences are weighed, is irresistible. ~ Robert Harris

Eloquence which does not startle I don't consider eloquence. CICERO, LETTER TO BRUTUS, 48 B.C. ~ Robert Harris

Like interviewing a new cleaner. Do you want someone who can give you the history of cleaning and the theory of cleaning, or do you want someone who'll just get down and clean your fucking house? They chose you because they think you'll clean their fucking house. ~ Robert Harris

Often the most powerful men in a state can pass down a street unrecognized, while the most famous bask in feted impotence ~ Robert Harris

The avenue was designed by Reichsminister Albert Speer and completed in 1957. It is one hundred and twenty-three meters wide and five-point-six kilometers in length. It is both wider, and two and a half times longer, than the Chaps Elysees in Paris.

Higher, longer, bigger, wider, more expensive...even in victory, thought March, Germany has a parvenu's inferiority complex. Nothing stands on its own. Everything has to be compared with what the foreigners have.... ~ Robert Harris

Anyone found not enjoying themselves will be shot. ~ Robert Harris

A ghost who has only a lay knowledge of the subject will be able to keep asking the same questions as the lay reader, and will therefore open up the potential readership of the book to a much wider audience. ~ Robert Harris

I am sure future historians will say the biggest and most astonishing change in politics has been the embracing of all the tenets of Thatcherism by the party of Keir Hardie: trade union legislation, Europe, the replacement of Trident, 10 per cent tax for people who have made millions from their companies. ~ Robert Harris

It's easy enough to get into power. You can make promises and try to be all things to all people. But the moment you have to make decisions, you're going to annoy at least half of them. Whatever you do, in the end you're almost certain to be brought down by your own character traits. ~ Robert Harris

The line between accident and suicide isn't always clearly defined. You could kill yourself without really making up your mind. ~ Robert Harris

History was a patchwork of voids. The great university libraries and public archives had mostly rotted away or been used as fuel in the Dark Age. An entire generation's correspondence and memories had vanished into this mysterious entity the antiquarians called 'The Cloud'. ~ Robert Harris

Perhaps Mother Nature is punishing us, he thought, for our greed and selfishness. We torture her at all hours by iron and wood, fire and stone. We dig her up and dump her in the sea. We sink mineshafts into her and drag out her entrails - and all for a jewel to wear on a pretty finger. Who can blame her if she occasionally quivers with anger? ~ Robert Harris

Surely the greatest mercy granted us by Providence is our ignorance of the future. Imagine if we knew the outcome of our hopes and plans, or could see the manner in which we are doomed to die - how ruined our lives would be! Instead we live on dumbly from day to day as happily as animals. But all things must come to dust eventually. No human being, no system, no age is impervious to this law; everything beneath the stars will perish; the hardest rock will be worn away. Nothing endures but words. ~ Robert Harris

What fascinates people isn't policy- who cares about policy? What fascinates people is always people- the detail of another person's life. ~ Robert Harris

Quod volimus credimus libenter
we always believe what we want to believe ~ Robert Harris

Egyptologists, skilled in piecing together the papyri of lost civilisations, suddenly discovered that the same talent could be applied to working out the pattern of German radio traffic. ~ Robert Harris

From the Latin, con clavis: 'with a key'. ~ Robert Harris

Any man who is truly worthy must consider himself unworthy. ~ Robert Harris

To say she was my girlfriend was absurd: no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend ... I suppose I ought to have realize it's ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship. ~ Robert Harris

There are occasions when losing is a victory, so long as there is a fight. ~ Robert Harris

Cicero himself appeared, hand in hand with Tullia, nodding good morning to everyone, greeting each by name ("the first rule in politics, Tiro: never forget a face"). ~ Robert Harris

Orwell has always been a huge influence on me. ~ Robert Harris

An excess of simplicity, after all, was just another form of ostentation, and pride in one's humility a sin. ~ Robert Harris

A comrade who deserts a comrade is a cowardly dog, and all such dogs should die a dog's death, comrade - ~ Robert Harris

To be brave, by definition, one has first to be afraid. ~ Robert Harris

Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the center of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth is becoming warmer-it must be our fault! The mountain is destroying us-we have not propitiated the gods! It rains too much, it rains too little-a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our behavior, that if only we lived a little better, a little more frugally, our virtue would be rewarded. But here was nature, sweeping toward him-unknowable, all-conquering, indifferent-and he saw in her fires the futility of human pretensions. ~ Robert Harris

Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events. ~ Robert Harris

No one can really claim to know politics properly until he has stayed up all night writing a speech for delivery the following day. While the world sleeps, the orator paces by lamplight, wondering what madness ever brought him to this occupation in the first place. Arguments are prepared and discarded. The exhausted mind ceases to have any coherent grip upon the purpose of the enterprise, so that often--usually an hour or two after midnight--there comes a point where failing to turn up, feigning illness, and hiding at home seem the only realistic options. And then, somehow, just asa panic and humiliation beckon, the parts cohere, and there it is: a speech. A second-rate orator now retires gratefully to bed. A Cicero stays up and commits it to memory. ~ Robert Harris

Everyone thinks politics will just go on the way it is. I don't agree. ~ Robert Harris

It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money. ~ Robert Harris

The kulaks were contagious. Their souls were contagious. They carried the spores of counter-revolution. ~ Robert Harris

I see myself as the literary equivalent of a skilled lathe-operator, or a basket-weaver; a potter, maybe: I make mildly diverting objects that people want to buy. ~ Robert Harris

I feel as if I have walked into a mirrored room and glimpsed myself from an unfamiliar angle for the first time. Is that really what I look like? Is that who I am? ~ Robert Harris

History wasn't made without taking risks, that much he knew. So maybe sometimes you had to take risks to write it, too? ~ Robert Harris

Well, good luck to you both. Rome will be the winner whoever is the victor'. Cicero began to move away but then checked himself, and a slight frown crossed his face. He returned to Catulus. 'One more thing, if I may? Who proposed this widening of the franchise?' 'Caesar' Although Latin is a language rich in subtlety and metaphor, I cannot command the words, either in that tongue or even in Greek, to describe Cicero's expression at that moment. 'Dear gods' he said in a tone of utter shock. 'Is it possible he means to stand himself?' 'Of course not. That would be ridiculous. He's far too young. He's thirty-six. He's not yet even been elected praetor' 'Yes, but even so, in my opinion, you would be well advised to reconvene your college as quickly as possible and go back to the existing method of selection.' 'That is impossible' 'Why?' 'The bill to change the franchise was laid before the people this morning' 'By whom?' 'Labienus' 'Ah!' Cicero clapped his hand to his forehead. ~ Robert Harris

Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk's too big, the desk's too small, there's too much noise, there's too much quiet, it's too hot, too cold, too early, too late. I had learned over the years to ignore them all, and simply to start. ~ Robert Harris

History is too important to be left to the historians. ~ Robert Harris

I think it's very, very hard not to go slightly crazy if you're in the top in politics - especially if you're there for a long time. ~ Robert Harris

For me, as I suspect for most people, there comes a point where you have enough. If you've got £20 million, why keep going until you've got £100 million or £1,000 million? Does anyone need another vast yacht or private jet or a house full of gold? ~ Robert Harris

Isn't an awareness of their transience what gives these moments their exquisite edge? ~ Robert Harris

It was an unnatural time to be awake, ... It meant nothing good. He associated it with emergency, bereavement, conspiracy, flight; the sad skulk away at the end of a one-night affair. ~ Robert Harris

To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do. ~ Robert Harris

Acceptance. That, he had learned in Russia many years ago, was the secret of survival ... Accept it. Wait. Let the system exhaust itself. Protest will only raise your blood pressure. ~ Robert Harris

Golf requires only a few simple Rules and Regulations to guide the players in the true nature of its sporting appeal. The spirit of the game is its own referee. ~ Robert Harris

If you spend too long trying to avoid death, you will be dead in at least one way. ~ Robert Harris

Have you ever seen fishermen when a storm is brewing on a great river? I have seen them many a time. In the face of a storm one group of fishermen will muster all their forces, encourage their fellows and boldly put out to meet the storm: 'Cheer up, lads, hold tight to the tiller, cut the waves, we'll pull her through!' But there is another type of fishermen - those who, on sensing a storm, lose heart, begin to snivel and demoralise their own ranks: 'What a misfortune, a storm is brewing; lie down, boys, in the bottom of the boat, shut your eyes; let's hope she'll make the shore somehow. ~ Robert Harris

In a generation or two, or maybe sooner, young golfers of true sporting instinct will wonder why all this handling of the ball is necessary. It will seem to them that the game is not as good as it might be. ~ Robert Harris

Violence crackled around him in the dry air, like static electricity ~ Robert Harris

The destination of the journey could not be altered, only the manner in which one approached it - whether one chose to walk erect or to be dragged complaining through the dust. ~ Robert Harris

So," said Ruth, "how bad is it?" "You haven't read it?" "Not all of it." "Well," I said, politely, "it needs some work." "How much?" The words "Hiroshima" and "nineteen forty-five" floated briefly into my mind. "It's fixable," I said, which I suppose it was: even Hiroshima was fixed eventually. ~ Robert Harris

I write as well as I can. I'm a journalist at heart, so it's the story that matters. ~ Robert Harris

Young man, I applaud your courage and your sincerity, but I'm afraid you need to learn a few lessons in political reality. It is simply impossible to expect the peoples of Britain and France to take up arms to deny the right of self-determination to ethnic Germans who are trapped in a foreign country they wish to leave. Against that single reality, all else fails. As for what Hitler dreams of doing in the next five years - well, we shall have to wait and see. He's been making these threats ever since Mein Kampf. My objective is clear: to avert war in the short term, and then to try to build a lasting peace for the future - one month at a time, one day at a time, if needs be. The worst act I can possibly commit for the future of mankind would be to walk away from this conference tonight. ~ Robert Harris