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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 SiddigTo Arab Sunni Islamists, Iranians are gabrs (Zoroastrians) while Shi'ites, including Arab ones, are rafidis (heretics) who must be โre-convertedโ or put to death.
Amir TaheriWhat 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 FoleyThroughout all the years and in everything we do, we have focused most of all on the development of human capacity, beginning with our own professional staff, and leveraging their expertise to enrich the Arab community. We have embraced the concept of the 'knowledge worker' and have sought to empower our people and the Arab world's people to dream, to imagine, and to create.
Talal Abu-GhazalehFear is the main factor in Arab politics... There is no Arab who is not harmed by Jews' entry into Palestine.
Moshe SharettEvery indication is that the Sudanese government will be defining it as an Arab, Muslim country. But there are also a lot of Christians and a lot of people, like the Nuba, who are not Arab. And that is why it is going to be problematic that Sudan will be defined in this way.
Rebecca HamiltonI'm one of the luckiest Arab actors on the planet, because I've done, I think, two of the finest Arab roles that have been out in mainstream cinema for a very long time.
Alexander SiddigI don't think the Arab Spring had much to do with energy. I think it was just the opposite, in fact. I think the Arab Spring happened because particularly young people knew they were living in a context where they could not realize their full potential, that they are being kept down by their own governments.
Thomas FriedmanThe 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 CarterQuite frankly, I think political correctness is the worst form of censorship. You're not allowed to speak your mind unless you're black, or unless you're a terrorist, or unless you're an Arab or a minority people. Then you can say what you like. But if you are like a lot of us you are not supposed to say certain things.
Wilbur SmithI salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.
Ismail HaniyehThe bridge will only take you halfway there, to those mysterious lands you long to see. Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fair, and moonlit woods where unicorns run free. So come and walk awhile with me and share the twisting trails and wondrous worlds I've known. But this bridge will only take you halfway there. The last few steps you have to take alone.
Shel SilversteinIn 1982, when Alexander Haig and [Ariel] Sharon put this plan to invade the south of Lebanon and Beirut, they imagined that in two or three or five days, they can demolish the PLO and destroy its infrastructure. What happened? The longest Arab - Israeli confrontation.
Yasser ArafatShame about how weโre gonna die here, though. I mean, seriously. An Arab and a half-Jew enter a store in Tennessee. Itโs the beginning of a joke, and the punch line is โsodomyโโ.
John GreenBig efforts should be made to integrate Israel's Arab citizens into the fabric of the Israeli society and the Israeli economy. That's really the key to any further progress to do with the Palestinians beyond Israel's borders.
Moshe ArensWe [US government] have no fundamental disagreement with the Saudis - I mean, excuse me, with the Iraqis any more than we do with the Arab League, which we happen to support the position they're taking.
Joe BidenJust 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 JumblattThere is a connection between energy, climate, food and political stability. That has played out in the Arab awakening and is not done playing out.
Thomas FriedmanPublic spending on infrastructure has fallen to its lowest level since 1947. And the U.S., which used to have the finest infrastructure in the world, is now ranked 16th according to the World Economic Forum, behind Iceland, Spain, Portugal and the United Arab Emirates.
Ray LaHoodOn the flip side, I enjoy covering the Arab world, I've spent my entire career here in the Middle East, but I would never call myself a war correspondent.
Anthony ShadidBased on the considerations of history, ancient history, and international axioms, the logic of following up a citizen with his shadow for the purpose of the demarcation of political frontiers of any state has been discounted for international conventions. For example the Arabs cannot ask Spain just because they were there some time in the past nor can they ask for any other area outside the frontiers of the Arab homeland
Saddam HusseinMexican homes as a rule are closed off to the world by high blank walls of yellowish masonry, topped with broken glass to discourage escaladores, or climbing burglars. The gardens and fountains and other delights are hidden, as in an Arab city.
Charles PortisThere is often no material difference between the enjoyment of the highest ranks and those of the rudest stages of society. If the life of many a young English nobleman, and an Iroquois in the forest, or an Arab in the desert are compared, it will be found that their real sources of happiness are nearly the same.
Sir Archibald Alison, 2nd BaronetIt will be another disaster, after Irangate. Not only that, not only this longest Arab - Israeli confrontation: but also the most important and successful war of attrition which still continues in the south of Lebanon.
Yasser ArafatIn the Arab mindset, democratization may not be an exclusively negative term. But it's associated closely with American policies and the occupation of Iraq.
Gilles KepelI'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 HatoumThe Iraqi government and most Iraqis understand that they have to bring back the Sunni Arab 20, 25 percent of the population. It won't work with these Shia militias running amok in these areas.
James Franklin JeffreyThe armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel ... to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not of more declarations.
Gamal Abdel NasserWe want to be, I think, an example for the rest of the Arab world, because there are a lot of people who say that the only democracy you can have in the Middle East is the Muslim Brotherhood.
Abdallah III think that the global consciousness concerning all those elements that produce tension, fractions of societies, is changing in the sense that we all tend to understand a little more the needs for harmonizing the process and integrating races and cultures and producing multiculturalism and different melting-pot situations. That affects global things, tolerating the Arab, the African, the Eastern civilizations, getting rid of this hegemonic dominance by the West. That's all comprehensive now in terms both of understanding and approaching the whole planet.
Gilberto GilI believe that the Iraqis have an opportunity now, without Saddam Hussein there, to build the first multiconfessional Arab democracy in the Middle East. And that will make for a different kind of Middle East. And these things take time. History has a long arc, not a short one. And there are going to be ups and downs, and it is going to take patience by the United States and by Iraq's neighbors to help the Iraqis to do that. But if they succeed, it'll transform the Middle East, and that's worth doing.
Condoleezza RiceLibya is a war of the womb. A product of the romantic minds of women who fantasize about an Arab awakening. It is estrogen-driven paternalism on steroids.
Ilana MercerEvery time an Arab leader truly wanted peace, they got it. If the Palestinians truly want peace, we will make peace.
Benjamin NetanyahuIraq is not going to starve to death because of the absence of assistance from Arab countries.
Jalal TalabaniClinton impressed Assad: a young man who appeared to want to be neutral in the Arab-Israeli dispute - an illusion of course, but that's what Assad thought.
Robert FiskWe need to embed our forces - our troops inside the Iraqi military. We need to arm directly the Kurds. And all of that has to be done in concert with the Arab nations.
Jeb BushFrom the streets of Cairo and the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, from the busy political calendar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, social media was not only sharing the news but driving it.
Dan RatherThe Holocaust only emerged in American life after Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day war against its Arab neighbours.
Norman FinkelsteinThe idea of photographing an Arab man naked and having him simulate homosexual activity, and having an American GI woman in the photographs, is the end of society in their eyes.
Seymour HershI wrote Baghdad Central right after translating a great work by Ibrahim al-Koni, who is sort of a master of Arab fiction. In conversations with him I realized that translations have been my MFA program. If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English. That's how I've figured it out.
Elliott Colla