Popular quotes about Arab! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 6
What 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 driving motivation of a new American endeavor in Iraq and in neighboring Arab lands should be modernizing the Arab world.
Fouad AjamiWe came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village.
Moshe DayanTo 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 TaheriWhen my stories were translated into other languages and received good reviews in the international press and won prizes, some Arab festivals and newspapers began to take an interest in what I had produced. This sudden Arab interest is a form of hypocrisy and nonsense.
Hassan BlasimFor seven years I wrote and published my texts on the Internet and no Arab festival invited me and no Arab publishing house wanted to publish my books, and I wasn't known in the Western world because of my political positions.
Hassan BlasimLove in the Arab world is like a prisoner, and I want to set (it) free. I want to free the Arab soul, sense and body with my poetry. The relationships between men and women in our society are not healthy.
Nizar QabbaniSocial media allows people to connect. So instead of reading about the Arab Spring, I can have students following along, in real-time, with what is happening.
Steven AndersonI've been many times to Dubai and the U.A.E., and I have friends that live there. It would be exciting to stage world heavyweight championship fights in the Arab world. It's something Muhammad Ali achieved when he fought in Zaire or the Philippines. It's absolutely exciting to fight in countries where you have never fought.
Wladimir KlitschkoI was so skinny, they gave me the nickname stechetto - the stick. I was tall, thin, ugly and dark like an Arab girl. I looked strange. All eyes. No flesh on my bones.
Sophia LorenFaced with the potential of mass atrocities and a call for help from the Libyan people, the United States and our friends and allies stopped Gadhafi's forces in their tracks. A coalition that included the United States, NATO and Arab nations persevered to protect Libyan civilians. So this is a momentous day in the history of Libya. The dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted, and with this enormous promise the Libyan people now have a great responsibility: to build an inclusive and tolerant and democratic Libya that stands as the ultimate rebuke to Gadhafi's dictatorship.
Barack ObamaWhen we strengthen our relations with the Gulf states, when we cooperate with the Arabs, everybody asks if we are looking for a new geopolitical place. But in the Middle East and the Gulf, you can find German, French and British goods everywhere. German relations to these states are very good, as are English and French relations. Does this make them Arab-oriented?
Recep Tayyip ErdoganAmerica rejects bigotry. We reject every act of hatred against people of Arab background or Muslim faith America values and welcomes peaceful people of all faiths - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and many others. Every faith is practiced and protected here, because we are one country. Every immigrant can be fully and equally American because we're one country. Race and color should not divide us, because America is one country.
George W. BushSome socialist movements in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain, for instance, were genuine. I was making films about the so-called Arab Spring, and I'm well aware of how complex the situation really was. But it goes without saying is that the West immediately infiltrated and 'derailed' the revolutions, turning them into what you have described.
Andre VltchekThe zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history.
Malcolm XI think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community.
Newt GingrichThe 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 SilversteinTo me it seems certain that the fatalistic teachings of Muhammad and the utter degradation of women is the outstanding cause for the arrested development of the Arab. He is exactly as he was around the year 700, while we have kept on developing.
George S. PattonEgypt is in the second day of angry street protests. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is calling for calm. Because nothing calms an enraged Arab country like a powerful woman ordering it around.
Conan O'BrienShame 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 GreenMoammar Gaddafi, who has called himself the 'Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,' should go down in history with the Emperor Bokassa and Idi Amin as a grotesque reminder of why people have the right to change their government.
Elliott AbramsI am not sure that I know enough about the pre-history of 9/11 to agree or disagree. But I did think at the time that the [George W.] Bush administration took a number of cues from the Israeli government, not only by drawing on and intensifying anti-Arab racism, but by insisting that the attack on US government and financial buildings was an attack on "democracy" and by invoking "security at all costs" to wage war without a clear focus (why the Taliban?), and by suspending both constitutional rights and the regular protocol for congressional approval for declaring war.
Judith ButlerSixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. ... The global wave of democracy has barely reached the Arab states. For too long, many people in that region have been victims and subjects. They deserve to be active citizens.
George W. BushThe first and most important necessity is the creation of a modus vivendi with the Arab people.
Albert EinsteinThey fled. The American louts fled. Indeed, concerning the fighting waged by the heroes of the Arab Socialist Baath Party yesterday, one amazing thing really is the cowardice of the American soldiers. we had not anticipated this.
Mohammed Saeed al-SahafJordan has to show the Arab world that there's another way of doing things. We're a monarchy, yes, but if we can show democracy that leads to a two-, three-, four-party system - left, right and center - in a couple of years' time, then the Muslim Brotherhood will no longer be something to contend with.
Abdallah IIOur enslavement to oil has required the repression of millions of Arab people. As they shake off their bonds, so must we.
Naomi KleinThe perception in the Arab world now is that we are having secularists against Islamists, and that's it. So the secularists are progressive; the Islamists are reactionary, conservative. This perception is wrong.
Tariq RamadanIt'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 OzTeachers and librarians can be the most effective advocates for diversifying children's and young adult books. When I speak to publishers, they're going to expect me to say that I would love to see more books by Native American authors and African-American authors and Arab-American authors. But when a teacher or librarian says this to publishers, it can have a profound effect.
Pat MoraWhatever the political injustices are that created an environment that brought this about, it was not Americans who flew those planes into those buildings. And we should remember that. The crimes against humanity were perpetrated by people who were Arab Muslims.
Robert FiskThe riveting moral power of the Arab Spring comes from its homegrown quality. This is about Arabs overcoming fear to become agents of their own transformation and liberation.
Roger CohenWe are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy. We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called 'isolationism.'
Pat BuchananNation building is our central task, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And states, nations can't just be built with military power. Despite all difficulties, it's very inspiring to see how the Kurds, the Arab Sunnis and the Shiites are coming together here, how they're jointly defining the basis on which their state is to be built, the political course this state will pursue and who is to receive which cabinet positions.
Zalmay KhalilzadIn America access is always about architecture and never about human beings. Among Israelis and Palestinians, access was rarely about anything but people. While in the U.S. a wheelchair stands out as an explicitly separate experience from the mainstream, in the Israel and Arab worlds it is just another thing that can go wrong in a place where things go wrong all the time.
John HockenberryThe irony is that Iraq actually has one of the richest and most sophisticated cuisines in the world. So many classic American or European foods - ceviche, albondigas, even the mint julep - have roots in Iraqi cuisine, which was a crossroads of Persian and Arab and Turkic traditions. The oldest written recipes in the world are from Iraq!
Annia CiezadloThe fact is, that with the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Arab countries, almost all of whom left behind all their property for which compensation was never paid.
Meir KahaneOne of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th century Arab philosopher known as Averroes in the West. In his time, he was making the non-literalist case for interpreting the Koran.
Salman RushdieI have been a long-time advocate for a just Arab-Israeli peace and for Palestinian refugees. Today, as you are aware, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan and Iraq are being overwhelmed by those fleeing the conflict in Syria, often with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Many are severely tortured - abused women and their traumatized children whose husbands, fathers, and brothers have been killed or permanently disabled.
Queen Noor of JordanA foreign ideology cannot be introduced into Chechnya - were it through an Arab or al-Qaeda. Our experience is rich and long enough for us to be Muslims and know what jihad is.
Aslan MaskhadovI think if we want to defeat terrorism, I think if we truly are sincere about defeating terrorism, we need to quit arming the allies of ISIS. If we want to defeat terrorism, the boots on the ground - the boots on the ground need to be Arab boots on the ground.
Rand PaulThe most striking thing is that even before Osama bin Laden was killed, he seemed largely irrelevant to the Arab Spring.
Paul WolfowitzI 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. KissingerA man of distinguished, beautiful eloquence, and persistent, over pressing thought... Ameen Rihani was one of the foremost pioneers of modern illumination. He firmly believed in the significance of reviving the Arab spirit and protecting the freedom of thought and the freedom of human conscience.
Mikhail Naimy