Ingeborg Refling Hagen Quotes

“This face seemed full of suffering, despair, confusion, so that I became uneasy again… It seemed like tiredness and defeatism spread from him to everyone close by.”

Ingeborg Refling Hagen

On Jan Masaryk, volume III
Memoirs

“He was pretty. His eyes were kind and young. One had to wonder whether he was fourteen years old, or a thousand, being so smooth and untouched. A little boy peered out of the man's face. He was funny… I was bewildered… a man, responsible for the life and death of thousands, and yet there was no trace on him? One could be frightened of less, and yet so harmlessly innocent? Yes, innocent was the word… I knew I would remember this meeting the rest of my life, because I had never before met an emptyness like this.”

Ingeborg Refling Hagen

On Dwight Eisenhower, volume III
Memoirs

“…[T]hat lunatic monster…”

Ingeborg Refling Hagen

On Adolf Hitler, volume II
Memoirs

“She was so open and frank… She made space around her, if we just behaved… Everybody seemed to trust this woman and gathered gladly around her.”

Ingeborg Refling Hagen

On Eleanor Roosevelt, volume III
Memoirs

“[Capitalism]… is a great troll. It settles in a society, and then eats away silently. Eats more and more freedom, more humanity, more human rights, more ability to speak…”

Ingeborg Refling Hagen

Translated from her memoirs, volume III
Memoirs