Arab Spring Quotes

• I think some of this fascination with the 'Arab Spring' is just a grand experiment with Israel's survival.

  John Bolton

  Spring, Thinking, Israel

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• Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality.

  Eric Alterman

  Spring, Uganda, Egypt

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• We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Inspiring, Women, 4th Of July

  Declaration of Sentiments, First Woman's Rights

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• In any conflict area, it is always the women who are the first point of attack. But I think the more they have seen of oppression and violence, they have gotten more brave, more strong, more fearless than they were. You see this refusal to just keep quiet and do as you are told.

  Fatima Bhutto

  Leadership, Wisdom, Strong

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• Revolution is like a love story. When you are in love, you become a much better person. And when you are in revolution, you become a much better person.

  Alaa Al Aswany

  Spring, Love You, Stories

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• The 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 Cohen

  Spring, Quality, Overcoming

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• No matter what's happening in the Middle East - the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment - the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.

  Abdallah II

  Spring, Emotional, Issues

  4 Copy quote

• Social 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 Anderson

  Spring, Real, Reading

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• If you look not just at the Arab spring, but at what I call the youth spring that has started in Europe, young people are starting to find a voice, and they are not looking to the traditional media to reflect that.

  Shane Smith

  Spring, Media, Europe

  "Shane Smith: 'I want to build the next CNN with Vice - it's within my grasp'". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. March 23, 2013.

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• I 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 Haniyeh

  Spring, People, Democracy

  "Hamas ditches Assad, backs Syrian revolt". www.reuters.com. February 24, 2012.

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• From 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 Rather

  Wall, Spring, Japan

  "I’ve Discovered Facebook" by Dan Rather, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 16, 2011.

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• The international community cannot stand by and watch the massacre of Libyan protesters. In Rwanda we watched. In Kosovo we acted.

  Anne-Marie Slaughter

  Spring, Community, Watches

  Anne-Marie Slaughter @SlaughterAM, twitter.com. February 24, 2011.

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• I'm optimistic, though. Now, with the Arab Spring, I think that people in the region are beginning to overturn some of these clichés, and Western editors are starting to catch up. We're seeing some exceptions to the stereotypes, like Elizabeth Rubin's great piecein Newsweek, "The Feminists in the Middle of Tahrir Square." But an article like that shouldn't be the exception. It should be the rule.

  Annia Ciezadlo

  Spring, Optimistic, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• It is the growing periphery of the Arab world - the masses at its margins, not its feeble and decaying center - that is shaping the future of the region.

  Wadah Khanfar

  Spring, World, Growing

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• I think the Internet and technology in general has changed everything. We can see it overseas even more with the Arab Spring and so forth.

  Jane Fonda

  Spring, Technology, Thinking

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• The Arab spring reminds me a bit of the decolonisation process where one country gets independence and everybody else wants it. How about us, when do we get it, when do we make our move? And you have a situation where someone has been in power for decades, where the integrity of elections, democracy and security have really not been debated or discussed and most people suspect that elections are rigged and that the democratic rotation that elections are supposed to ensure doesn't really happen. And when this goes on for a while you are sitting on a powder keg.

  Kofi Annan

  Country, Integrity, Spring

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• Democracy or breakdown in Syria would change the whole Middle East overnight.

  Paul Krugman

  Spring, Democracy, Middle East

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• I believe democracy will succeed in Tunisia, but I also believe that it will succeed in the other Arab Spring countries.

  Rashid al-Ghannushi

  Country, Spring, Believe

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• I think that the drama of people rising up demanding their own freedom is one that resonates very deeply with America. I think that President Barack Obama has tried and would like to find a way to relate to the Arab Spring, but I think he also wants to be, rightly, very careful that we don't take it over. It is very important that they own this. He is trying to influence it this way but without, "We're so never going to go to the extreme of Iraq and putting boots on the ground again."

  Thomas Friedman

  Spring, Drama, Thinking

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• There are an awful lot of things going on that need understanding and explanation, but - to put it mildly - the world is a mess.

  Madeleine Albright

  Spring, Reality, Community

  "Face the Nation" with Bob Schieffer, www.cbsnews.com. July 27, 2014.

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• The Arab Spring has heightened the ideological tension between Ankara and Tehran, and Turkey's model seems to be winning.

  Mustafa Akyol

  Spring, Winning, Turkeys

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• Independence 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 Barber

  Spring, Mean, Security And Freedom

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Congress needs to send a strong signal that direct communication with the leader of the free world is a privilege, particularly for a regime that has been as hostile as Iran has been towards America for more than three decades. President Rouhani needs to take these two simple steps to demonstrate good faith before any further discussions.

  Ted Cruz

  Leadership, Strong, Spring

  "Cruz praises Obama on Iran" by Burgess Everett, www.politico.com. September 28, 2013.

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• Syria is a civil war. Syria began as a popular uprising, just like the other experiences in the Arab Spring, with a repressive government that responded by basically killing the protesters. It's not a genocide, it's a war, and there's a difference. Genocide is a preplanned attack on people because of who they are. This is a interstate conflict.

  Susan Rice

  Spring, War, Government

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

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• In Egypt the neoliberal programs have meant statistical growth, like right before the Arab Spring, Egypt was a kind of poster child for the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund:] the marvelous economic management and great reform. The only problem was for most of the population it was a kind of like a blow in the solar plexus: wages going down, benefits being eliminated, subsidized food gone and meanwhile, high concentration of wealth and a huge amount of corruption.

  Noam Chomsky

  Children, Spring, Blow

  "Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide". Interview with Laura Flanders / GRITtv, www.alternet.org. May 4, 2012.

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