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Mata Hari

  • “[Preparing to meet a firing squad in 1917:] Life is an illusion.”

    • Mata Hari,
    • in Barbara McDowell and Hana Umlauf, Woman's Almanac ()

  • “I have encountered in this world riff-raff and good people. I lose. I win. I defend myself when I am attacked. I take when someone has taken from me. But I beg you to believe me; I have never done an act of espionage against France. Never. Never.”

    • Mata Hari,
    • in Russell Warren Howe, Mata Hari ()

  • “My dance is a sacred poem in which each movement is a word and whose every word is underlined by music. The temple in which I dance can be vague or faithfully reproduced, for I am the temple.”

    • Mata Hari,
    • in John S. Craig, Peculiar Liaisons: In War, Espionage, the Terrorism in the Twentieth Century ()

Mata Hari, Dutch dancer, alleged spy

(1876 - 1917)

Real name: Gertrud Margaretha Zelle MacLeod.