Cockburn Quotes & Sayings

For America, Britain, and the Western powers, the rise of ISIS and the caliphate is the ultimate disaster. Whatever they intended by their invasion of Iraq in 2003 and their efforts to unseat Assad in Syria since 2011, it was not to see the creation of a jihadi state spanning northern Iraq and Syria, run by a movement a hundred times bigger and much better organized than the al-Qaeda of Osama bin Laden. The war on terror for which civil liberties have been curtailed and hundreds of billions of dollars spent has failed miserably. — Patrick Cockburn

When you do a piece of journalism, you may have to cut away 95 percent of what you are experiencing. — Leslie Cockburn

It's a very enclosed world on Wall Street. — Leslie Cockburn

Muqtada belongs to the most famous religious family in Iraq, which is the al-Sadr family. He's really the third in line. [Muqtada's father] drew his power from the first really important al-Sadr, Muhammad Baqir, who was executed by Saddam in 1980, together with his sister. So it's really a family of martyrs, and that's why Muqtada suddenly emerged from nowhere with the fall of Saddam. — Patrick Cockburn

Little round planet in a big universe, sometimes it looks blessed, sometimes it looks cursed. Depends what you look at obviously, but even more it depends on the way that you see. — Bruce Cockburn

When governments and other vested interests attack me personally I usually regard it as a vindication, otherwise they would use facts. That's why I believe in the wonderful Claud Cockburn dictum, 'Never believe anything until it is officially denied.' It has certainly been my experience. — John Pilger

An autobiography should give the reader opportunity to point out the author's follies and misconceptions. — Claud Cockburn

I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music, but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time. — Bruce Cockburn

Despair is the central part of the psychopathology. For the handmaiden of gossip is treachery: — Alexander Cockburn

But there are times, I would argue, when fiction delivers the greater truth. — Leslie Cockburn

There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. — Alexander Cockburn

Regulation of sexual behavior
is the preferred route to wider social
control. — Alexander Cockburn

US policy of recruiting Syrian "moderates" to fight both ISIS and Assad, Biden said that in Syria the US had found "that there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers." Seldom have the real forces at work in creating ISIS and the present crisis in Iraq and Syria been so accurately described. — Patrick Cockburn

I remember when the idea of living to be 40 seemed absurd. — Bruce Cockburn

Of the nineteen hijackers that day, fifteen were Saudi. — Patrick Cockburn

When you know even for a moment
That it's your time
Then you can walk with the power
Of a thousand generations — Bruce Cockburn

Though chains be of gold, they are chains all the same. — Bruce Cockburn

I did a lot of writing for a lot of different kinds of bands that I was in and out of during those five years and that left me with a little body of songs that I liked better when I played alone, so I ended up going out solo and very soon made my first album. — Bruce Cockburn

When you have a situation that's destructive, when there's tremendous inhumanity everywhere, you see how humanity survives in all of its different permutations. — Leslie Cockburn

But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight / Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight. — Bruce Cockburn

It sounds strange to say it, but you can be in a war zone and have a lot of fun. Even though war is essentially pain on all sides, human beings have the capacity to enjoy themselves. The soldiers are mostly young people, full of enthusiasm and energy, and that's an exciting thing for an old guy like me. — Bruce Cockburn

After reading Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad when I was a student at Yale, I wanted to live in the world they captured in their books. I had had some experience living in Africa. I was drawn to that kind of adventure. — Leslie Cockburn

This lack of coverage had been convenient for the US and other Western governments because it enabled them to play down the extent to which the "war on terror" had failed so catastrophically in the years since 9/11. This failure is also masked by deceptions and self-deceptions on the part of governments. — Patrick Cockburn

Biden said that in Syria the US had found that there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers. — Patrick Cockburn

Republicans know well that a change of rhetorical pace is necessary. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations. — Alexander Cockburn

An economic blockade may cause more deaths by a factor of a hundred, but it does so silently and behind closed doors. Its first victims are the very young, the very old and the very sick. The numbers of children dying before their first birthday increased from one in thirty when sanctions were imposed to one in eight seven years later. Many Iraqis were simply not getting enough to eat. I — Patrick Cockburn

Wear the badge of environmental radicalism, and you're a citizen automatically under suspicion. — Alexander Cockburn

This sharp increase in the strength and reach of jihadist organizations in Syria and Iraq has generally been unacknowledged until recently by politicians and media in the West. A primary reason for this is that Western governments and their security forces narrowly define the jihadist threat as those forces directly controlled by al-Qaeda central or "core" al-Qaeda. This enables them to present a much more cheerful picture of their successes in the so-called "war on terror" than the situation on the ground warrants. — Patrick Cockburn

Some people never see the light Till it shines thru bullet holes. — Bruce Cockburn

England in the late 1940s was famously grim. As I remember it, London back then was a very dirty place, from coal dust and smoke, from the grit stirred up every day by the jackhammers still clearing out rubble from the Blitz. — Alexander Cockburn

Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too — Alexander Cockburn

Agile is an attitude, not a technique with boundaries. An attitude has no boundaries, so we wouldn't ask 'can I use agile here', but rather 'how would I act in the agile way here?' or 'how agile can we be, here?' — Alistair Cockburn

Happiness in its purest form is held in silence. — Anne-Marie Cockburn

I wear my shadows where they're harder to see, but they follow me everywhere. I guess that should tell me I'm travelling toward light. — Bruce Cockburn

My models for graceful aging are guys like John Lee Hooker and Mississippi John Hurt, who never stopped working till they dropped, as I fully expect to be doing, and just getting better as musicians and as human beings. — Bruce Cockburn

A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience. — Alexander Cockburn

One of the problems with the media covering this place is that there are stereotypes of news, one of which is "war rages" and the other is "peace dawns." And there isn't much in between. When I talk to foreign journalists, often they are gritting their teeth because they've been asked for a piece about how shops are reopening and restaurants are reopening and so forth - happy pieces. And it just ain't so. — Patrick Cockburn

I can't imagine my life any other way than it's been. — Bruce Cockburn

So sometimes life puts a giant plate of steaming hot blueberry fucking pancakes on your table. It's still down to you whether to eat them or say, 'No, thanks.' You can walk away from shite or pancakes. Wait for the next course, see if something tastier comes along." "But it's better, you think, to seize the pancakes?" "Aye!" John raised his empty tumbler to the approaching waitress. "Carpe pancakes! — Avery Cockburn

There are some things that could hold it together, notably oil revenues. But at the moment, the much vaunted surge has had a measure of success primarily, to my mind, because Sunni and Shia Iraqis hate and fear each other more these days than they hate and fear the Americans. — Patrick Cockburn

The trouble with normal is it always gets worse. — Bruce Cockburn

Water of life is gonna flow again/changed from the blood of heroes and knaves/Word mercy's gonna have a new meaning/ when we are judged by the children of our slaves. — Bruce Cockburn

One day you're waiting for the sky to fall, The next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all. — Bruce Cockburn

A sane person doesn't think war is a good idea. I'm not a pacifist. I feel that there are situations where fighting is inescapable, but we don't go looking for those things. — Bruce Cockburn

No foundation that I am aware of has hired ex-journalists to promote a thoroughgoing inquiry. — Alexander Cockburn

No chord in populism reverberates more strongly than the notion that the robust common sense of an unstained outsider is the best medicine for an ailing polity. Caligula doubtless got big cheers from the plebs when he installed his horse as proconsul. — Alexander Cockburn

The conflict has become like a Middle East version of the Thirty Years' War in Germany four hundred years ago. Too many players are fighting each other for different reasons for all of them to be satisfied by peace terms and to be willing to lay down their arms at the same time. Some still think they can win and others simply want to avoid a defeat. In Syria, as in Germany between 1618 and 1648, all sides exaggerate their own strength and imagine that temporary success on the battlefield will open the way to total victory. Many Syrians now see the outcome of their civil war resting largely with the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. In this, they are probably right. — Patrick Cockburn

'Gifts' was just a short little one-verse song that I used to close shows in the '60s. — Bruce Cockburn

I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject. — Leslie Cockburn

You know, if you want to meet a lot of Iraqi leaders, the best places are the hotels in Amman or in London. In general the government here is amazingly unpopular. — Patrick Cockburn

One good reason for the popularity of "reductionism" among the philosophical outposts of the Western Establishment is that it can be, and is, used as a device for trying to take the wind, so to speak, out of the sails of Marxism ... In essence reductionism is a kind of anti-Marxist caricature of Marxist determinism. It is what anti-Marxists pretend that Marxist determinism is. — Claud Cockburn

Lord, spit on our eyes that we may see, how to wake up from this tragedy. — Bruce Cockburn

There's roads, and there's roads,
And they call. Can't you hear it?
Roads of the earth
And roads of the spirit

The best roads of all
Are the ones that aren't certain.
One of those is where you'll find me
'Til they drop the big curtain. — Bruce Cockburn

A well-functioning team of adequate people will complete a project almost regardless of the process or technology they are asked to use (although the process and technology may help or hinder them along the way). — Alistair Cockburn

The travel writer seeks the world we have lost - the lost valleys of the imagination. — Alexander Cockburn

I wanted to play rock and roll when I started playing. Nobody at that time ever thought about songwriting. You sang songs, that's all. You sang other people's songs. That's all there were. — Bruce Cockburn

If I try to understand what it means to be a Christian, I look at the two instructions that were given in the Bible that are paramount, and those are to love God with all your heart and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. That's it. — Bruce Cockburn

'Each One Lost' I wrote the day after I got home. My week in Afghanistan was a very short trip, but it was a powerful experience. — Bruce Cockburn

By 1967, J. Edgar Hoover had concluded that the Black Panther Party had replaced the Communist Party as the gravest threat to national security. — Alexander Cockburn

In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple. — Leslie Cockburn

I covered the first Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and Israel for ABC News. — Leslie Cockburn

They keep telling us that in war truth is the first casualty, which is nonsense since it implies that in times of peace truth stays out of the sick bay or the graveyard. — Alexander Cockburn

The career of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was very strange. He was an obscure figure until Colin Powell made him famous by denouncing him before the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003. Powell claimed that Zarqawi was not only a member of al-Qa'ida but linked to Saddam Hussein's regime. Neither allegation was true, but together they met the political need to pretend that the invasion of Iraq was part of the war on terror. The — Patrick Cockburn

I like to think that if it hadn't gone as well as it has, if I wasn't able to make a living off of playing music, I would still be playing the music. But, of course, I wouldn't likely have had the opportunity to travel, and a lot of the places have inspired songs. — Bruce Cockburn

There are a lot of people missing in Iraq. Just the other day I heard of somebody asking $250,000 ransom for an Egyptian. Can you imagine? An Egyptian. That's inflation. This war," he said, leaning closer to her, "is all about money. — Leslie Cockburn

Lee was conscious that Nizar watched her trying to adjust her abaya. She knew everyone could tell a Western woman by her awkwardness and her shoes. — Leslie Cockburn

The weapon of the advocate is the sword of the soldier, not the dagger of the assassin. — Alexander Cockburn

All I ever thought was, 'I'm going to do this as long as I can, and if I can't get paid at it, I'll be a bum doing it.' And so, here I am. — Bruce Cockburn

Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separate, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce. — Claud Cockburn

In between effect and cause and just beyond the range of normal sight, this glittering joker was dancing in the dragon's jaws. — Bruce Cockburn

I consider C++ the most significant technical hazard to the survival of your project and do so without apologies. — Alistair Cockburn

All these years of thinking, ending up like this: In front of all this beauty, understanding nothing. — Bruce Cockburn

The Iraqi government had an army with 350,000 soldiers on which it had spent $41.6 billion in the three years since 2011. But this force melted away without significant resistance. Discarded uniforms and equipment were found strewn along the roads leading — Patrick Cockburn

But from the moment George Bush decided to overthrow Saddam, the people who were going to benefit here were the Shia, who are 60 percent of the population. So if you were ever going to have an election, then the Shia would take over. — Patrick Cockburn

It's always sort of amazing, sitting in Baghdad, to watch visiting dignitaries being received in the Green Zone by politicians who have usually very little support and seldom go outside the Green Zone. — Patrick Cockburn

Never underestimate the effectiveness of a straight cash bribe. — Claud Cockburn

In its attempt to crush the Black Panthers, the FBI engineered frequent arrests on the flimsiest of pretexts. — Alexander Cockburn

Pose a political threat to Business As Usual, and sooner or later, mostly sooner, someone will try to kill you. — Alexander Cockburn

The invitation for artists to compete to see who can be the most charitable is a wonderful thing. — Bruce Cockburn

So much for the crusade against drugs ... all America is actually doing is consolidating its position as the biggest dealer in addictive and lethal substances on the planet, waging war on all rivals, whether they take the form of the Thai domestic tobacco industry or the Colombian cocaine cartels. — Alexander Cockburn

An intelligence officer from a Middle Eastern country neighboring Syria told me that ISIS members say they are always pleased when sophisticated weapons are sent to anti-Assad groups of any kind, because they can always get the arms off them by threats of force or cash payments. — Patrick Cockburn

I've been scraping little shavings off my ration of light
And I've formed it into a ball, and each time I pack a bit more onto it
I make a bowl of my hands and I scoop it from its secret cache
Under a loose board in the floor
And I blow across it and I send it to you
Against those moments when
The darkness blows under your door
Isn't that what friends are for? — Bruce Cockburn

I don't think the whole of Iraq would be under al-Sadr, but I think he would be the predominant force on the Shia side. Quite contrary to his sort of maverick, firebrand image, he's shown a propensity to deal with the other side, to look for compromises, to negotiate. You might have a loose federation [in Iraq]. — Patrick Cockburn

While Ross and Cockburn were hastily burning the White House and Department buildings, anxious only to escape, and never sending more than two hundred soldiers beyond Capitol Square, the President, his Cabinet, his generals, and his army were performing movements at which even the American people, though outraged and exasperated beyond endurance, could not but laugh. — Henry Adams

Why did you become a journalist?"
"Better than working for a living. — Leslie Cockburn

There are some decision-makers in the world whose version of sanity is a little different from what I consider the right one. — Bruce Cockburn

We're confronted with great darkness as a species right now as spiritual creatures on this planet. I don't think it's hopeless, and I don't want 'You've Never Seen Everything' to make people feel hopeless. But I think we've got to call a spade a spade. — Bruce Cockburn

Are you a journalist?"
"I'm a doctor."
"Good. We need doctors, Wallahi." Sadoon scowled. "Journalists only tell lies and smuggle carpets. — Leslie Cockburn

Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead. — Claud Cockburn

I started making little films with a 16 mm camera as an undergraduate at Yale. My first job out of college was 'assistant editor' on a forgettable low budget feature. — Leslie Cockburn

Male female slave or free; peaceful or disorderly; maybe you and he will not agree; but you need him to show you new ways to see. — Bruce Cockburn

As so often during the US military intervention in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, there was excessive focus by the media on the actions of Western governments as the prime mover of events. This was accompanied by an inadequate understanding of the significance of developments on the ground in Iraq and Syria as the force really driving the crisis in both countries. — Patrick Cockburn

Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe. — Bruce Cockburn

Nothing can inspire religious duty or animation but religion. — Alexander Cockburn

If you don't keep learning and growing, you're going to stagnate. — Bruce Cockburn

This American system of ours', he shouted, 'call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if only we seize it with both hands, and make the most of it'. A month later in New York I was telling this story to Mr John Walter, minority owner of The Times. He asked me why I had not written the Capone interview for the paper. I explained that when I had come to put my notes together, I saw that most of what Capone had said was in essence identical with what was being said in the leading articles of The Times itself, and I doubted whether the paper would be best pleased to find itself seeing eye to eye with the most notorious gangster in Chicago. — Claud Cockburn

US Vice President Joe Biden gave the US government's real view of its regional and Syrian allies with undiplomatic frankness when speaking at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard University's Institute of Politics on October 2. He told his audience that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and UAE were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. — Patrick Cockburn

Be careful about Burma. Most people cannot remember whether it was Siam and has become Thailand, or whether it is now part of Malaysia and should be called Sri Lanka. — Alexander Cockburn

The second half of the '60s really was a kind of learning period, in terms of writing, for me. — Bruce Cockburn

Some lurid things have been said about me - that I am a racist, a hopeless alcoholic, a closet homosexual and so forth - that I leave to others to decide the truth of. I'd only point out, though, that if true these accusations must also have been true when I was still on the correct side, and that such shocking deformities didn't seem to count for so much then. Arguing with the Stalinist mentality for more than three decades now, and doing a bit of soapboxing and street-corner speaking on and off, has meant that it takes quite a lot to hurt my tender feelings, or bruise my milk-white skin. — Christopher Hitchens