Robert Lacey Quotes & Sayings

It's true; I'm fascinated by elite groups. — Robert Lacey

When Ali was killed by a Kharijite wielding a poisoned sword during Ramadan in A.H. 40 (A.D. 661), he became one of the earliest victims of Islamic terrorism. — Robert Lacey

So Meyer Lansky was Hyman Roth? Was Marlon Brando Frank Costello? The confusion was compounded when quite serious newspapers started incorporating Godfather comparisons into their reporting on organized crime. — Robert Lacey

Saud bin Abd al-Aziz was the moon-faced, shortsighted, bespectacled son of the old founder of Saudi Arabia, who'd always been his father's protege but had never quite lived up to everything that his father had. — Robert Lacey

It's the love you had that matters, isn't it, not the pain. — Robert Lacey

It seems to me that Sotheby's is very much like the British monarchy: an old and apparently very venerable institution which is in fact very nimble on its feet, an institution invested with a great deal more self-interest than the public image would suggest. — Robert Lacey

Whoever wins society will win this war.says Prince Mohammed bin Nayef — Robert Lacey

The House of Saud had executed Juhayman. Now they were making his program government policy. — Robert Lacey

Of all the varieties of modern pollution, noise is the most insidious. — Robert Lacey

There is a convention that the principal heir should be kept away from real danger. As the 'spare' rather than the heir, Harry is expected by the royal family to take the ultimate military risks. — Robert Lacey

We try to transform each detainee from a young man who wants to die to a young man who wants to live. Prince Mohammed bin Nayef — Robert Lacey

Better that anger should be directed into jihad abroad than into Iran-style revolution at home. — Robert Lacey

There was no law that explicitly banned women from driving in Saudi Arabia. There is none today - the Kingdom's notorious female driving ban is a matter of social convention, fortified by some ferocious religious pressures. So some Saudi women started looking thoughtfully at their Kuwaiti sisters. — Robert Lacey

The Billy Carter of the British monarchy. — Robert Lacey

America certainly did its part. But doing the sums, it is now clear that through the eight years of Ronald Reagan's presidency, 1981-89, Saudi Arabia actually provided more material assistance to the world's varied assortment of anti Communist "freedom fighters" than did the United States, thus hastening the end of the Cold War and helping accomplish the downfall of the "Evil Empire. — Robert Lacey

I lived in Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s. It was, for a Westerner, pretty idyllic. There were the religious police; there were the rules; there were the prayer times. But it was as if we were existing in two separate universes. The Westerners were just allowed to get on with their way of life. — Robert Lacey

If an election were held here tomorrow," Fahd once confided to a colleague, "Bin Baz would beat us without even leaving his house. — Robert Lacey

On December 7, 2001, Osama announced that he was leaving. "He deserted us," remembers Al-Hubayshi bitterly. "After five weeks his people came round telling us to make our way to Pakistan as best we could and surrender to our embassies there. We had been ready to lay down our lives for him, and he couldn't make the effort to speak to us personally. Today I think that I was made use of by Bin Laden - exploited,
just like all the young kids who went to jihad. What did he care when he sent us over the horizon to die? He was as bad as the religious sheikhs back in Saudi who preached jihad in their
sermons every Friday. How many of them ever sent their own sons to Afghanistan? — Robert Lacey

What royal families are very good at doing is surviving and reinventing themselves. That's true whether it's a constitutional monarchy in Britain or an authoritarian monarchy. — Robert Lacey

When Winston Churchill wanted to rally the nation in 1940, it was to Anglo-Saxon that he turned: "We shall fight on the beaches; we shall fight on the landing grounds; we shall fight in the fields and the streets; we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." All these stirring words came from Old English as spoken in the year 1000, with the exception of the last one, surrender, a French import that came with the Normans in 1066
and when man set foot on the moon in 1969, the first human words spoken had similar echoes: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Each of Armstrong's famous words was part of Old English by the year 1000. — Robert Lacey

Poetry reading is the chamber music of the actor's craft. — Robert Lacey

My whole life as a grammar-school boy, getting to Cambridge University and working on the 'London Sunday Times' has been very aspirational. — Robert Lacey

If you see a poor man come into your majlis, try to speak to him before you speak to the other people," the king told his son. "Never make a decision on the spot. Say you will give your decision later. Never sign a paper sending someone to prison unless you are 100 percent convinced. And once you've signed, don't change your mind. Be solid. You will find that people try to test you." Fahd was delivering his basic course in local leadership - Saudi Governance 101.
"If you don't know anything about a subject, be quiet until you do. Recruit some older people who can give you advice. And if a citizen comes with a case against the government, take the citizen's side to start with and give the officials a hard time the government will have no shortage of people to speak for them. — Robert Lacey

We were not willing to be the tool of a foreign government," remembers Sheikh Hassan today. "There were a number of people in authority in Iran who wanted to recruit us against
the Saudi government. They came to us - they made quite a few approaches to us. But we told them that we wished to remain independent." His aide Jaffar Shayeb did the political talking on the sheikh's behalf. "We listened to what they said," says Shayeb of the Iranians. "But we were never willing to
be part of their games. — Robert Lacey

That woman," Bandar liked to say of the British prime minister, "was a hell of a man. — Robert Lacey

Fear generates anger, and fear generates violence, and those were part of what built the Saudi state. — Robert Lacey

MODERN SAUDI HISTORY IN FIVE EASY LESSONS
If you did not go hungry in the reign of King Abdul Aziz, you would never go hungry.
If you did not have fun in the reign of King Saud, you would never have fun.
If you did not go to prison in the reign of King Faisal, you would never go to prison.
If you did not make money in the reign of King Khaled, you would never make money.
If you did not go bankrupt in the reign of King Fahd ... — Robert Lacey