Archive

In which we learn the price of transparency...

"You are a bastard," - Alessandra Mussolini, fascist Italian politician responding to a political cartoon by comedian Jim Carrey depicting the death of her father Benito Mussolini, 31 March 2019

"A good journalist is not the one that writes what people say, but the one that writes what he is supposed to write." - Todor Zhivkov, Premier of the People's Republic of Bulgaria.

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” - Primo Levi, 1986

"You have to fight that one more round," - Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, speech to Cornell University students in 2013, six years before his extradition on massive corruption charges.

"You are like a journalistic Nero fiddling while Rome burns and having a hell of a good time [...] And you forget, you forget it is really burning," - I.F. Stone, US Journalist, 3 April 2009

"If I could do it all again, I'd be a farmer." - Mobutu Sésé Seko, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, speaking to his national security advisor Honoré Ngbanda.

"I owe the public nothing." - JP Morgan, American financier and banker, 11 May 1901

"You must obey the law, always, not only when they grab you by your special place." - Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, 4 November 2003