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I think the Arab world has no personality cult situation going on that they have in much of the Western world, South America included. They are a culture of words and religion, and you won't see manycsa charismatic people on Al Jazeera, except for the ones who are now learned presenters. You see Arab leaders getting on TV - which was very hard for me working out how to do the part, since Arab leaders are looking somnambulant, staring into their microphone, almost as if someone's got a hand up their back.
Alexander SiddigWe have to work sincerely and responsibly to thwart any attempt to divide the Arab nation into small groups, with which foreign countries would deal separately. This would eventually be in the interests of Zionism, which stands behind such policies, formulating the relevant theories and promoting distorted information to world politicians, especially in the West, in order to make them adopt an approach which is harmful to the Arab nation and is even against the legitimate interests of their own countries.
Saddam HusseinWhat holds an Arab leader in power is a mixture of violence and prestige. Both President Assad and King Hussein were felt to have defended Arab interests against the world. That, in the end, is more important than what they wear on their head.
James BuchanThe Arab and the camel are inseparable. It's been said that and Arab would give up his wife rather than give up his camel. Personally, I haven't got a camel, but I think it's a great idea.
Groucho MarxIt's true that we in Iraq are now paying a heavy price as a consequence of senseless violence, but nonetheless there are many positive things happening generally on the part of people in Arab countries who were living in darkness and absolute silence because of dictatorship. The people in Arab countries are now speaking out and asking many questions about human rights, minorities, religion, democracy, "the other," and so on.
Hassan BlasimThe Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition.
Naguib MahfouzI don't hold America responsible for the largely oppressive governments in the 22 Arab countries. There are repressive Arab governments that are our allies and there are those that are our nominal enemies. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference to what extent we're involved in propping up those governments.
Lawrence WrightIraqi fighters on the front lines, You courageous officers and soldiers who have been fighting valiantly and efficiently - you have restored the glories of your great Iraq. You have proved that you are the true descendants of those great fighters throughout the ages. You have given the most remarkable example of Arab military power, of which the Arab nation is in need today and tomorrow in its struggle to maintain its existence and integrity, and to restore its usurped rights and territories.
Saddam HusseinPresident Bush is an intelligent man. He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq . [...] I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait .
April GlaspieWhat outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there's not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq....They target and kill journalists ... uh, from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al -, like Arab news services like Al-Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity.
Linda FoleyIndependence used to be the ticket for liberty. But today, security and freedom, whether it's in the Arab Spring, whether it's in Iraq or whether it's right here in the United States, means working cooperatively and interdependently with others.
Benjamin BarberThe source of the terror in Lebanon as in Iraq is to be found in the Koran and in the despotisms of the Arab Middle East.
David HorowitzI came to declare that I am a friend to Arabs, at a time when it is not easy to be friend to Arabs, because nowadays those who have ambitions and interests would not befriend Arab.
George GallowayThe danger of leaving overwhelming wealth and power in the grasp of a small minority is a lesson that leaders such as ousted Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak have learned a little too late, as the demonstrations across the Arab world indicate.
Graydon CarterFor decades, the violence in the Middle East has claimed a multitude of innocent civilian victims: Men, women and children, Arab and Israeli.
John ConyersIf I were an Arab-American, I would insist on being profiled. This is not the time for civil rights. There are larger issues for Americans.
Jack NicholsonJust as the 99% of Soviet citizens who supported the Soviet regime in 1985 was no indication of what the people inside the USSR really thought, the army of true believers that we think we see in the Arab world is an illusion.
Natan SharanskyIt's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.
Walid JumblattArab nationalism, which tended to be until relatively recent somewhat secular in motivation, has now become increasingly religious and fundamentalist. And that makes it more pervasive, more difficult to deal with.
Zbigniew BrzezinskiMany occasions I've sat down with Israelis to say, where do you see your country in 10 years time, and work me back, so we can figure out the synergies and the connections between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. No Israeli has ever been able to answer that question.
Abdallah IIOur enslavement to oil has required the repression of millions of Arab people. As they shake off their bonds, so must we.
Naomi KleinIf the Arab world today looked like Tunisia, it would be a huge blow for the extreme ideologies. But Tunisia needs more support than it is getting, particularly from their close neighbors in Europe who have a great stake in North Africa.
Paul WolfowitzI don't know of a single instance of these Arab freedom fighters holding up pictures of bin Laden. I know many instances of them displaying American flags in Benghazi or painting 'Facebook' on their foreheads in Cairo. The idea of freedom . . . is absolutely contradictory to what bin Laden stood for, which was . . . taking Muslims back to some medieval theocracy and encouraging people to die not for freedom but to go to paradise and to kill innocent people along the way. The contrast is really striking.
Paul WolfowitzThe Arab is trying to be pleased with death and murder and mayhem and disease and poverty and political unrest.
L. Ron HubbardLook at what has occurred in history. When the Berlin Wall fell, it was not surprising, but it was unexpected. Who predicted the Arab Spring? Nobody expected it, but all the ingredients were there. I think all the ingredients are also there for Quebec to become a country. But when? That's another question.
Gilles DuceppeIt's possible a Palestinian state will be installed over the heads of the Palestinians. It could be part of an agreement between the Israeli government and moderate Arab states, but not one between Israel and the Palestinians.
Amos OzEverything that could produce a clash between the Arab world and the West seemed dangerous to me.
Dominique de VillepinNow it's of peculiar interest to an Arab country that there is a company and a certain set of bankers who also finance the World Federation of Mental Health. ...and we see that although the KGB and so forth seems to be associated with the World Federation of Mental Health, their other organization in action seems to go back to Jewish Bankers.
L. Ron HubbardAll the children in the world, when they go to school, have the right to study in their mother tongue. But we go to school and run into literary Arabic as children. It sounds like a foreign language. The words for "house" or "table" or "lamp" are not the same as the words we use at home, and most of the other words are alien to children at school. Classical Arabic is one of the prisons of the Arab world.
Hassan BlasimI'm not much interested in prizes, whether from the Arab world or from the Western world. Writing is a very difficult process and I want to continue my work.
Hassan BlasimThere is always the risk that a conflagration in the Middle East becomes larger and more dangerous. In this scenario, we discover that the Arab Spring was merely the prelude to a deeper and much farther-reaching upheaval in the region that has greater impact on countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Ian BremmerI'm often asked the same question: What in your work comes from your own culture? As if I have a recipe and I can actually isolate the Arab ingredient, the woman ingredient, the Palestinian ingredient. People often expect tidy definitions of otherness, as if identity is something fixed and easily definable.
Mona HatoumWe must formulate, with both imagination and restraint, a new approach to the Middle East - not pressing our case so hard that the Arabs feel their neutrality and nationalism are threatened ... while at the same time trying to hasten the inevitable Arab acceptance of the permanence of Israel ... We must ... seek a permanent settlement among Arabs and Israelis based not on an armed truce but on mutual self-interest.
John F. KennedyIf [Western] relations with Russia are to be friendly, they must be open and sincere, otherwise there can be no friendship at all. That means one should be able to speak openly about everything at meetings and conferences. It shouldn't be that we can't discuss the killing of journalists in Russia, or the suppression of human rights, or all the warning signs surfacing in Russia because of oil and gas or other economic reasons. It's a big problem, but it's the same in Western relations with Arab states.
Vaclav HavelI think what the president [Barack Obama] understands, and what he's trying to do, is that we have to support the Arab and Kurdish fighters on the ground who are actually doing the fighting.
Hillary ClintonOne of the Christian fundamentalists' goals seems to be to rebuild the Temple, which means destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which presumably means war with the Arab world - one of the goals, perhaps, in fulfilling the prophecy of Armageddon. So they strongly support Israeli power and expansionism, and help fund it and lobby for it; but they also support actions that are very harmful and objectionable to most of its population - as do Jewish fundamentalist groups, mostly rooted in the US, which, after all, is one of the most extreme religious fundamentalist societies in the world.
Noam ChomskyI am quite sensitive to politics, because you know, as an Arab, an Iraqi, all your life, you are very conscious of it.
Zaha Hadid[I have a] fondness for telling stories, like the Arab storytellers on the marketplace. ... I will never grow tired of [telling] stories [and] I make the mistake of thinking that everyone has the same enthusiasm!
Orson WellesIn Iraq and Syria, American leadership - including our military power - is stopping ISIL's advance, instead of getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East, we are leading a broad coalition, including Arab nations, to degrade and ultimately destroy this terrorist group.
Barack ObamaThe whole notion of land property rights in the Arab world is different from that in Europe.
William Eldridge OdomHowever, the resources at our people's disposal are very few and we require assistance from the neighboring Arab countries, and for weapons in order to fight the enemy.
Ahmed YassinVirtually all informed observers agree that a fair and equitable resolution of the plight of the Palestinians would considerably weaken the anger and hatred of Israel and the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds - and far beyond, as international polls reveal. Such an agreement is surely within reach, if the US and Israel depart from their long-standing rejectionism.
Noam ChomskyWhat a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend. Arab Ruta (the same boy grown to manhood), wo sits before me, is my good friend, but the handclasp will be shorter, the smile will not be so eager on his lips, and though the path is for a while the same, he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together.
Beryl MarkhamI also do not believe that the United States can let itself be driven into a political role by escalating terrorism, and therefore, the leaders of the Arab world and Arafat should do their utmost to put an end to this and then the United States should do its utmost to produce a political solution.
Henry A. Kissinger