Daily Inspiration Quote by Oriana Fallaci

Fallaci’s line is a moral sleight of hand that doubles as a confession. She draws a bright, almost theatrical boundary between “a man” and “a tyrant,” as if the latter were a different species, exempt from the ordinary ethics that protect individual life. That distinction is doing heavy work: it sanitizes violence by reframing it as political hygiene, while also exposing the psychological necessity of that reframing. She doesn’t say she wouldn’t kill; she says she couldn’t kill “a man.” The capability she denies isn’t physical. It’s the ability to endure the intimate guilt of murder when the target retains human contours.

The subtext is about narrative control, the same arena where Fallaci made her reputation. “Tyrant” isn’t just a description; it’s a verdict, a category that authorizes extraordinary measures. By insisting she aimed at the category rather than the person, she’s arguing that assassination can be understood as a form of justice rather than vengeance - and that language is the court that grants it legitimacy.

Context matters: Fallaci came out of Europe’s mid-century bruise, shaped by fascism, resistance politics, and later the theater of revolutionary violence and authoritarian power she reported up close. Journalists are supposed to translate events, not participate in them, yet her work often flirted with the ethics of proximity. This quote captures that tension: the reporter who wants to remain “not capable” of murder, and the citizen who can’t stomach tyranny without imagining an exit wound.