John Sweeney Quotes

British investigative journalist and author (born 1958)

John Sweeney (born 7 June 1958) is a British investigative journalist and author who has worked for The Observer newspaper and for the BBC's Panorama television series.

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Alternative Names: John Paul Sweeney

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To understand the extraordinary fact of Ceausescu's monolithic power, and the otherwise incomprehensible lack of resistance to it, one must try to experience the sheer dead weight the Romanians bore day in, day out. During the twenty-four years of his reign, their thoughts were blunted and restricted by what George Orwell might have called 'Homagespeak'.

His tongue could not get round seemingly simple phrases like tutulor, a form of address meaning 'to everybody'. When Ceausescu said it, it sounded like 'everyboggy'. It is hard to put across to those who have not heard Romanian, a language waggishly described by the BBC's John Simpson as a 'mixture of dog Latin and Esperanto', just how uncouth Ceausescu sounded. To American ears, one must imagine a New Jersey drawl; to British ears, one should think of a Wolverhampton whine: provincial, but not interestingly so.

To write anything about Ceausescu without discussing his secret police is like Hamlet without the Prince, everybody else and the skull.

This is a horror story – a true one – about a monster who came to be president of a country.

One of my political heroes is the former head of the IRA Martin McGuinness.

I look like an exploding tomato and shout like a jet engine and every time I see it, it makes me cringe.

NO, TOMMY, YOU STOP NOW!!! NO, LISTEN TO ME!!! YOU WERE NOT THERE-AT THE BEGINNING-OF-THAT-INTERVIEW!!! YOU-WERE-NOT-THERE!!! YOU DID NOT HEAR OR RECORD-ALL THE INTERVIEW!!! [calms down] Do you understand? Do you understand? [continues shouting] YOU ARE QUOTING THE SECOND HALF OF THE INTERVIEW, NOT THE FIRST HALF! YOU CANNOT ASSERT WHAT YOU'RE SAYING! [calms down] Now, you listen to me.