Arab World Quotes

• Our path to Palestine will not be covered with a red carpet or with yellow sand. Our path to Palestine will be covered with blood... In order that we may liberate Palestine, the Arab nation must unite, the Arab armies must unite, and a unified plan of action must be established.

  Gamal Abdel Nasser

  Army, Order, Yellow

  Gamal Abdel Nasser's re-election speech (1965) as quoted in Efraim Karsh "Islamic Imperialism: A History" (p. 162), 2006.

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• I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, 'This river has flown here for thousands of years.' There are magical moments in these places.

  Zaha Hadid

  Thinking, Years, Cities

  Interview With Hannah Pool, www.theguardian.com. March 4, 2009.

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• Somebody was asking me the other day - President Bush is now talking about freedom for the Arab world. I say, well, that's great. I was talking about that fifty years ago.

  Lakhdar Brahimi

  Talking, Years, Great Day

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• The absence of Saddam is a huge weight off the Arab world.

  Paul Wolfowitz

  World, Weight, Absence

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• The 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 Mahfouz

  Believe, Doors, People

  FaceBook post by Naguib Mahfouz from Oct 13, 2015

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• Our ability to effectively engage China and the Arab world rests on shared economic and political interests and mutual understanding.

  Rick Larsen

  Political, Understanding, Engagement

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• All 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 Blasim

  Mother, Running, Children

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Internet literacy must become universal within the Arab world.

  Talal Abu-Ghazaleh

  World, Internet, Literacy

  Speech at the First Arab Conference on Arabizing the Internet, Amman, Jordan, April 01, 2001.

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• Present-day Spain translates as many books into Spanish, annually, as the Arab world has translated into Arabic in the past 1,100 years.

  Martin Amis

  Book, Past, Years

  "The age of horrorism (part three)" by Martin Amis, www.theguardian.com. September 9, 2006.

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• I think it is extremely important that the West support this experiment [of Tunisian democracy] with investment, with aid, with symbolic support, not just flows of democracy assistance …If Tunisia can’t make it, what are the prospects for the rest of the Arab world?

  Larry Diamond

  Thinking, Support, Democracy

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• As for those who think the Arab world promises freedom, the briefest study of its routine traditional treatment of blacks (slavery) and women (purdah) will provide relief from all illusion. If Malcolm X had been a black woman his last message to the world would have been entirely different. The brotherhood of Moslem men-all colors-may exist there, but part of the glue that holds them together is the thorough suppression of women.

  Alice Walker

  Men, Thinking, Color

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• I believe that a prosperous, democratic Pakistan will be a steadfast partner for America, a peaceful neighbor for India, and a force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world.

  George W. Bush

  Believe, America, Peaceful

  www.nbcnews.com. January 16, 2007.

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• The whole notion of land property rights in the Arab world is different from that in Europe.

  William Eldridge Odom

  Europe, Land, Rights

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• Everything that could produce a clash between the Arab world and the West seemed dangerous to me.

  Dominique de Villepin

  World, West, Produce

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• So much of what we see and hear about the Middle East focuses on what we call politics, which is essentially ideology. But when it comes to the Middle East, and especially the Arab world, simply depicting people as human beings is the most political thing you can do. And that's why I chose to write about food: food is inherently political, but it's also an essential part of people's real lives. It's where the public and private spheres connect.

  Annia Ciezadlo

  Real, Writing, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• In my essays and articles I have been saying again and again that the case of Israel and Palestine, the case of Israel and the Arab world, and indeed the case of Israel and Europe, is not black and white. It's not a western movie.

  Amos Oz

  Black And White, Israel, Europe

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

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• There is no confidence in the Arab world today in the United States of America.

  John McCain

  America, United States, World

  Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

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• If 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 Wolfowitz

  Blow, Europe, Support

  "Bush Advisor Wolfowitz Says He'll Likely Vote for Clinton". Interview with Gordon Repinski, www.spiegel.de. August 26, 2016.

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• I think all of the attention of the world, to include the attention of the Arab world, should be on Saddam Hussein and whether or not he is prepared to give up the weapons of mass destruction that he has used to terrorise the region.

  Colin Powell

  Giving Up, Thinking, Mass Destruction

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• They [root causes of terror] come out of a long dialectic of U.S. involvement in the affairs of the Islamic world, the oil-producing world, the Arab world, the Middle East - those areas that are considered to be essential to U.S. interests and security.

  Edward Said

  Islamic, Oil, Roots

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• My early childhood was spent living by the Pacific Ocean. I carry with me something imprinted by that wide, limitless horizon, which I learned connected us to different people and cultures, including my own family's origins in the Arab World and Northern Europe. I understood early that my world was only a small part of a much larger one. That captivated me.

  Queen Noor of Jordan

  Ocean, Europe, People

  "Her Majesty Queen Noor: Yogi & Devoted Warrior for Peace". Interview with Gina Murdock, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• I realized that democracy is indivisible, or rather, that freedom is indivisible. There are many clown-democracies in the Arab world, which have nothing to do with freedom.

  Walid Jumblatt

  Democracy, World, Clown

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• I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad ...To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab
  world against us and make a broken tyrant, into a latter-day Arab hero.

  George H. W. Bush

  Hero, Tyrants, Iraq

  George H. W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft (2011). “A World Transformed”, p.464, Vintage

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• Just 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 Sharansky

  Army, Thinking, People

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• It'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 Jumblatt

  Wall, Iraq, People

  "And now the Syrians sniff freedom" by Boris Johnson, www.telegraph.co.uk. March 3, 2005.

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