Quotes & Sayings About The Middle East

It has been an honor to work in the Obama Administration and to serve this President, particularly during a period of unprecedented change in the broader Middle East. Obviously, there is still work to do but I promised my wife I would return to government for only two years and we both agreed it is time to act on my promise. — Dennis Ross

In a multipolar world, there must be more powers capable of taking responsibility, the U.S. and Europe must be able to unite to achieve peace in the Middle East. — Dominique De Villepin

In Arab capitals, the failure of the United States to stop Iran's nuclear program is understood as American weakness in the struggle for dominance in the Middle East, making additional cooperation from Arab leaders on Israeli-Palestinian issues even less likely. — Elliott Abrams

Iran is central to our foreign policy in the Middle East, a major player in global energy markets, and a key country in terms of our interaction with the Muslim world. — Howard Berman

One of the enduring problems with certain societies in the world - and this is certainly true of a lot of places in the Middle East - is that the capacity for self-governance and self-organizing just isn't there. It has to do with history. — P. J. O'Rourke

...And indeed it did take me a long time for me to find someone I wanted to marry. But I'm so glad I waited. What I know about Pete and me is that the flame will never go out. I do not look up from tossing the salad and think, Oh, God, how the hell did I ever get here? I do not look a the back of his head and think, I don't know you at all. I wake up with my pal, and go to sleep with my lover. He still thrills me, not only sexually but because of the way he regards the life that unfolds around him. I am interested in what he says about me and the children and our respective jobs, but I am also interested in what he says about the Middle East and the migratory patterns of monarchs and the amount of nutmeg that should be grated into the mashed potatoes and the impact that being a thwarted artist had on the life of Hitler. I believe he is a truly honest and awake and kind individual. If we live more than once, I want to find him again. — Elizabeth Berg

These days, I no longer believe there ever are truly good guys or bad guys in war, at least in the Middle East. They're generally shades of gray. But that doesn't translate well on television. It was too complicated. Too remote. — Richard Engel

Oil shaped U.S. decisions about the Middle East during both Democratic and Republican presidencies. The administration of President Jimmy Carter, a liberal Democrat, had produced the "Carter Doctrine." Under this doctrine, the United States claimed the right to defend its interest in Middle Eastern oil "by any means necessary, including military force." In — Howard Zinn

It goes without saying that the stability of the Middle East is the foundation for peace and prosperity for the world, and of course for Japan, should we leave terrorism or weapons of mass destruction to spread in this region, the loss imparted upon the international community would be immeasurable. — Shinzo Abe

I have great respect for the Syrian people, as I do for the rest of the Middle East. — Steven Magee

If you read the literature of the great religions, time and time again you come across descriptions of what is usually referred to as "spiritual experience." You will find that in all the various traditions this modality of spiritual experience seems to be the same, whether it occurs in the Christian West, the Islamic Middle East, the Hindu world of Asia, or the Buddhist world. In each culture, it is quite definitely the same experience, and it is characterized by the transcendence of individuality and by a sensation of being one with the total energy of the universe. — Alan W. Watts

I am honored to receive the TED Prize, but it's not about me; it's about our field - and the thousands of men and women around the world, particularly in the Middle East, who are defending and protecting sites. — Sarah Parcak

We have to fight radical Islam wherever it exists. It's in Afghanistan, it's in Saudi Arabia, throughout the Middle-East in big numbers and it's in the United States. — Tom Tancredo

Gabriel Levin's book is a journey through time and through entrenched animosities of the Middle East. What's astonishing and refreshing is his ability to combine the reporter's perspective with a deep knowledge of poetry, including pre-Islamic Arab poems. A brilliant poet is at work here-a poet in the rugged landscape of conflict and pain. — Adam Zagajewski

Were there peace and justice in the Middle East, the Arabs would no more need their tinhorn dictators than they would their corpulent princes. — James Buchan

The doctrine that everything is fine as long as the population is quiet, that applies in the Middle East, applies in Central America, it applies in the United States. — Noam Chomsky

Here's a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost. — Satoshi Kanazawa

No government in the Middle East is innocent. Wars make the stock market go up, so no one in America is innocent either, nor anyone anywhere where capitalism reigns. — Roseanne Barr

Israelis are a mix of North African, Levantine, and Eastern European, which inflames the politics but does amazing things for the women. — Kenneth Cain

I've read and traveled a lot in the Middle East, and I built on eyewitness accounts of horrific executions that would shape a boy's character and beliefs if he watched his father die that way. These are the stuff of which nightmares are made. — Terry Hayes

Darwin found out that when you took horses up to the high country in the Middle East, they would then grow long hair after a season or two. But when you took them - these long-haired horses - back into the low, hot country, they wouldn't get rid of the long hair, just in case, for about four generations. — L. Ron Hubbard

Every American who served in Iraq helped to make our nation safer, gave twenty-five million people the chance to live in freedom, and changed the direction of the Middle East for generations to come. There are things we got wrong in Iraq, but that cause is eternally right. — George W. Bush

How did the American people ever reach this point where they believe that US aggression in the Middle East will make us safe when it does the opposite? How did the American people ever reach the point where they believe that fighting unconstitutional wars is required to protect our freedoms and our Constitution? Why do we allow the NSA, CIA, FBI, TSA, etc. to destroy our liberty at home, as part of the Global War on Terror, with a pretext that they are preserving our liberty? Why are the lying politicians reelected and allowed to bankrupt our country, destroy our money, and enter wars without the proper consent? Why do the American people suffer in silence and not scream "Enough is enough!"? We've had enough of the "humanitarian do-gooders" and the proponents of "American exceptionalism" who give us nothing but war, economic suffering, and less freedom. This can and must be stopped. — Ron Paul

Before I got into politics, I wanted to be a missionary to people in the Middle East. I thought it would be better to speak with them in their own language. — Jonathan Krohn

Israel is the only truly democratic, secular country in the Middle East, right in the middle of all of them. — Brigitte Gabriel

As I watch what is happening in the Middle East and the carnage that comes over our television screens every evening, I cannot help but ask myself, what is wrong with humankind that we cannot stop the killing? — Marcy Kaptur

Iran has, by virtue of its growth and by virtue of the United States' mistakes in Iraq, tilted the balance of power in the Middle East. That is the case, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a threat. — Trita Parsi

Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter? — George W. Bush

In fact, Christianity has been one of the great salivations on planet Earth. It's what's necessary in the Middle East. Others have written about it, I think these people need to be forcibly converted to Christianity but I'll get here a little later, I'll move up to that. It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings. — Michael Savage

As a woman, you don't have really much freedom of choice in the Middle East - very often, by the time they are 13 or 14, girls get married. — Rula Jebreal

The Middle East is ailing. The malady stems from pervasive violence, shortages of food, water and educational opportunities, discrimination against women and - the most virulent cause of all - the absence of freedom. — Shimon Peres

Several experts on the Middle East concur that the Middle East cannot be democratized. — Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Israel's democracy is the bedrock on which our relationship stands. It's a shining example for people around the world who are on the frontline of the struggle for democracy in their own lands. Our relationship is also based on our common interest in a more stable and peaceful Middle East, a Middle East that will finally accord Israel the recognition and acceptance that its people have yearned for so long and have been too long denied, a Middle East that will know greater democracy for all its peoples. — William J. Clinton

The Palestinian Arabs' obsession with the Jews and rejection of all political compromise was inspired by Islamic teachings as well as by European fascism. — Sol Stern

It's like the Stone Age over there, just sand and rubble and IEDs. — Tom Perrotta

I never felt totally, 100%, patriotically English ... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon, and Damascus, and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London ... Done a fair bit of traveling really. — Andy Serkis

I think the public is very reluctant to get involved in more foreign wars, especially in the Middle East. And they understand, implicitly, that we go to war in the Middle East because of oil. And if we don't want to go to war in the Middle East, then we have to do something about the oil problem. And I think that view is gaining ground in the U.S. — Michael Klare

Can any of us even imagine, after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt suggesting we negotiate a resolution or that we could simply prosecute those involved? Of course it is unimaginable. We are right to be in the Middle East, and we are right to treat this as the war it is. — Marsha Blackburn

Is it really Allah's will, that none shall thrive, except the chosen hive? Islam is the one true religion, not a system of oppression. Islam is the one true religion, not a veil to persecution. Safa's tears fall. Still they fall. Fall on you. Fall on me. Safa's tears call. Still they call. Out to you. Out to me. Safa's tears weep. Still they weep. Weep for you. Weep for me. — Christian F. Burton

Everybody in the Middle East wants to explain why they're right. — P. J. O'Rourke

As president, I will stand up to the great human rights tests of our time - in China, Russia, and the Middle East. We must send a signal to our allies and adversaries that America is back in the leadership business. — Carly Fiorina

This was the first time I had come face-to-face with the other side of fundamentalism. The fundamentalism that I saw in my neighborhood was sexist and misogynistic and small-minded, but it wasn't violent. It was giving and loving and brotherly. It was about helping the poor, and since everybody was poor, that meant everybody helping everybody. There wasn't the kind of urban meanness you find in many American cities. It was as if a farm community had been transplanted to the city. — Richard Engel

When I asked Marine Sergeant Jeffrey Roberts what he thought was happening in Lebanon, he explained, "To me it was a civil war, only it wasn't just the North against the South. It was North against South, East against West, Northeast against Southwest, Southeast against Northwest, and we were in the middle of it all. There were just too many different sides. If we picked one, we had four others against us." Marine — Thomas L. Friedman

There exists an unmistakable demand in the Middle East and in the wider Muslim world for democratization. — Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Baalbek is so beautiful. It is the heart of beauty in the Middle East - I want to embrace these people with my music. I will try so hard for them. Their president is a Christian, their prime minister is a Muslim. Music is for everyone. — Mstislav Rostropovich

In South Africa, "some women identify as gay rather than lesbian" and a "masculine man" playing the dominant role in a relationship with another man, for instance, is called "a straight man" and is not perceived as "gay" because he act as penetrator during sexual intercourse. This holds true to some extent in North Africa and in the Middle East. — Chantal Zabus

Hot, dry katabatic winds, like the south foehn in Europe, the sharav in the Middle East, and the Santa Ana of Southern California, are all believed to have a decided effect on human behavior and are associated with such health problems as migraines, depression, lethargy, and moodiness. Some scientists say that this is a myth. — Tim Cahill

Bilbo's Last Song

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
Beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
The wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
Beneath the ever-bending sky,
But islands lie behind the Sun
That I shall raise ere all is done;
Lands there are to west of West,
Where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
Beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
And beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
And fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast! — J.R.R. Tolkien

There are fewer Arabs in Tel Aviv, one of the largest cities in the Middle East, than there are in Chicago, the largest city in the American Midwest. How do you accomplish such a remarkable feat of social engineering without massive violence? — Max Blumenthal

In the Middle East, we have people chopping the heads off Christians, we have people chopping the heads off many other people. We have things that we have never seen before - as a group, we have never seen before, what's happening right now.The medieval times - I mean, we studied medieval times - not since medieval times have people seen what's going on. I would bring back waterboarding and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding. — Donald Trump

I think Syria is in a particularly sensitive geopolitical position in terms of the politics of the Middle East. — Edward Luck

For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East. — Barack Obama

Israel is our strongest, most reliable ally in the Middle East. Of course, we're their most reliable ally, too. — Ben Stein

We liked the idea that it was a low-tech future. But everything always repeats the past. If you look today and look at something in the middle east where you got people getting beheaded it's like the crusades with Twitter. It's crazy, human nature does the same thing. In a way, even though you're in the future people wanted order so this sort of system rose up. — Alfred Gough

We have been in recess since July, and during that time there have been a fuel crisis, a Danish no vote, the collapse of the Euro and a war in the middle east, but what is our business tomorrow? The Insolvency Bill [Lords]. It ought be called the Bankruptcy Bill [Commons], because we play no role. — Tony Benn

Even as we pour hundreds of billions of dollars into our efforts in the Middle East, there is much that needs to be done to win the war of ideas in the Muslim world and beyond. — Herb Kohl

Since the uprisings in the Middle East many scholars have come out saying that freedom comes first before the Shariah. There is also something important that we must keep in mind in our understanding the Shariah, and that is the room for what is permissible should be as wide as possible. So we should leave it open to let people be creative. — Tariq Ramadan

I will always have two regrets. I don't have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East. — Zaha Hadid

Everything about [chance] scares the bejesus out of so many people; it's the this thing they try to avoid at all costs. Don't travel to the Middle East these days - there's a chance something could happen. Don't get involved with that new fellow on Creamery Street - I hear a lot of mud was scraped off his floor after the divorce. Don't have your baby at home - there's a a chance something could go wrong. Don't don't don't ... Well, you can't live your life like that! You can't spend your entire life avoiding chance. It's out there, it's inescapable, it's a part of the soul of the world. There are no sure things in this universe, and it's absolutely ridiculous to try and live like there are! — Chris Bohjalian

You will not really have durable peace without a proper security structure in the Middle East. — Mohamed ElBaradei

The Middle East has gone through periods of turmoil before. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were revolutions. When monarchies were collapsing in a number of countries, we had radicals and we had Nasserism. Today it's a little bit more complicated. — Adel Al-Jubeir

The situation of women living in Islam-stricken
societies and under Islamic laws is the outrage
of the 21st century. Burqa-clad and veiled women
and girls, beheadings, stoning to death,
floggings, child sexual abuse in the name of
marriage and sexual apartheid are only the most
brutal and visible aspects of women's
rightlessness and third class citizen status in the Middle East — Maryam Namazie

The Bolsheviks were atheists but they were hardly secular politicians in the conventional sense: they stooped to kill from the smugness of the highest moral eminence. Bolshevism may not have been a religion, but it was close enough. Stalin told Beria the Bolsheviks were "a sort of military-religious order." When Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, died, Stalin called him "a devout knight of the proletariat." Stalin's "order of sword-bearers" resembled the Knights Templars, or even the theocracy of the Iranian Ayatollahs, more than any traditional secular movement. They would die and kill for their faith in the inevitable progress towards human betterment, making sacrifices of their own families, with a fervour seen only in the religious slaughters and martyrdoms of the Middle Ages - and the Middle East. They — Simon Sebag Montefiore

At the beginning, I thought the best Islamic work was in Spain - the mosque in Cordoba, the Alhambra in Granada. But as I learned more, my ideas shifted. I traveled to Egypt, and to the Middle East many times.I found the most wonderful examples of Islamic work in Cairo, it turns out. I'd visited mosques there before, but I didn't see them with the same eye as I did this time. They truly said something to me about Islamic architecture. — I.M. Pei

People killing each other in the Middle East is not news. People not killing each other in the Middle East is news. — Kelvin MacKenzie

In his important work on the subject, Stephen Sizer has revealed how Christian Zionists have constructed a historical narrative that describes the Muslim attitude to Christianity throughout the ages as a kind of a genocidal campaign, first against the Jews and then against the Christians.12 Hence, what were once hailed as moments of human triumph in the Middle East - the Islamic renaissance of the Middle Ages, the golden era of the Ottomans, the emergence of Arab independence and the end of European colonialism - were recast as the satanic, anti-Christian acts of heathens. In the new historical view, the United States became St. George, Israel his shield and spear, and Islam their dragon. — Noam Chomsky

The deity who stalked the deserts of the Middle East millennia ago-and who seems to have abandoned them to bloodshed in his name ever since-is no one to consult on questions of ethics. — Sam Harris

Well, a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East would be a wonderful thing. — Stephen M. Walt

We will not commit suicide because of pressure from the international community. A Palestinian state is not possible at the moment. I would rather fight and try to explain the situation in the Middle East to the world than to agree to steps that harm my country to satisfy the international community. — Ayelet Shaked

Here's the Middle East. Here's the mosque, here's the church, open the temple, everybody's MAD! — Maria Bamford

We will stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. We will stop that nuclear arms race that could happen in the Middle East. We will also make that Putin knows we have brigades in eastern Europe to make sure we deter his aggression. Peace through strength works. — Bobby Jindal

As I've submerged myself in news of the revolutions sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, I wanted desperately to feel part of what was going on. And then it hit me: This is what white people were doing to me after Obama was elected! — Baratunde Thurston

Critics of the war plans (including myself) have pointed to the disastrous political results that must be expected: Iraq would break into three parts (Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center, Shi'ites in the south), the Middle East would be exposed to the onslaught of Iranian fanaticism, pro-Western Arab regimes would collapse. Israel would be surrounded by aggressive Islamic fundamentalism, like the Crusader kingdom with the advent of Saladin. — Uri Avnery

But not all Gaza residents were committed to the war. A reporter asked one of the Arabs what he most wanted. He was a taxi driver, father of ten. All he wanted was 'to eat and to work.' What did he think of Nasser? 'Nasser is good, Israel is good, America is good, Britain is good, Canada is good, India is good, Anything is good. — Robert John Donovan

Everyone in the Middle East pretty much wants to come and be an American citizen, but pretty much everybody is angry with the U. S. foreign policy. — Mohamed ElBaradei

American foreign policy is not understood by the vast majority of American people. And that this is due to a media that in this country is suppressed by Washington and by the owners of this media, who often tend to be corporate entities close to the [White House] and very often are arms manufacturers with a vested interest in chaos [in] the Middle East. And as a result Americans do not actually get both sides of the story. — Denis Halliday

We shouldn't have a program where we just say that we're going to take care of the world's refugees. Nobody in the Middle East is doing anything. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait - all the Gulf nations are doing nothing. — Rand Paul

China is thus following a path similar to that set by the United States after World War II, when it gave unstinting support to undemocratic governments in the Middle East on the promise of long-term access to low-priced oil-though without the huge arms transfers that accompanied, and remain a key component of, US political support. — Melvin Gurtov

No deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East ... — Barack Obama

In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it. — Robert M. Gates

Iraq is a very important part of securing the homeland, and its a very important part of helping change the Middle East into a part of the world that will not serve as a threat to the civilized world, to people like
or to the developed world, to people like
in the United States. — George W. Bush

The Americans were understandably on hair triggers. There was a good reason for all of this security. For despite TV images of quick victory, much of Baghdad certainly had not fallen and firefights with die-hard Ba'athists loyal to Saddam Hussein were raging all over the city. — Lawrence Anthony

Yet while on my trip to the Middle East, the London bombings occurred. This was yet another stark reminder that if we don't fight terrorists abroad, they just get closer to our home. — Kenny Marchant

Each Middle East country has their own unique kinds of challenges; but the fundamentals, the desire for democracy and freely elected governments is a common thread throughout. — John McCain

Two thousand years ago, in the Middle East, an event occurred that permanently changed the world. Because of that event, history was split. Every time you write a date, you're using the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as the focal point. — Rick Warren

Multiculturalism is only in the West. We are absorbing a large number of Muslims in the west and at the same time the Christians and the Jews and other minorities are fleeing the Middle East, churches are being burnt, nobody is talking about it. Where are the religious freedom of the minorities. — Mark Durie

We in the Middle East like to talk politics, we like to argue. Just look at the three prophets - Moses, Jesus and Mohammad. They are all from this small region which creates problems all the time. — Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani

Once again, as a flawed evaluator of dictators and failed strategist who has permitted Russia back in as a major player in the Middle East, is Hillary Clinton guilty or not guilty? — Chris Christie

Since the Bush-Cheney Administration took office in January 2001, controlling the major oil and natural gas fields of the world had been the primary, though undeclared, priority of US foreign policy ... Not only the invasion of Iraq, but also the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, had nothing to do with 'democracy,' and everything to do with pipeline control across Central Asia and the militarization of the Middle East. — F. William Engdahl

Without action, we are going to continue to allow Iran to be a safe harbor for terrorists, see its economy further deteriorate, and see the Middle East further destabilize. — Russ Carnahan

New political systems and philosophies were imported into the Near East under the general term democracy and grafted artificially into a society which was feudal in nature and theocratic in spirit. The results were not happy... — Gerald De Gaury

Americans like buying American vs. buying from Chavez or buying from the Middle East. — John Catsimatidis

This is not the sort of thing that shows up in satellite photographs. Whether in CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or in the East Asian studies department of a university, people usually analyze North Korea from afar. They don't stop to think that in the middle of this black hole, in this bleak, dark country where millions have died of starvation, there is also love. — Barbara Demick

I'm not sure whether I've been happy. After my last book tour, I sat on my balcony with a cup of tea. I thought: 'You can't rewind the movie. I've spent more than half my life in the Middle East. There have been great moments of horror and depression and loneliness.' — Robert Fisk

In the Middle East, bread is so essential to everyday life that word for it in Egyptian Arabic is aish, which means life. It's always been the staple grain. But the predicament is that the Fertile Crescent, where wheat cultivation began, has now become the part of the world most dependent on imported wheat. — Annia Ciezadlo

The one thing that shaped my life was when I was 15 or 16: I knew I wanted to be a journalist. And not just a journalist, but a journalist in the Middle East, and to go back to the Arab world and try to understand what it meant to be Lebanese. — Anthony Shadid

Ottoman provinces were re-formed and cobbled together into states. The region was carved up with little regard to ethnic, religious, or territorial concerns. The flawed and cavalier treaties of World War I explain to a large degree why the Middle East remains unstable and angry today. Every Muslim schoolchild is taught this arc of history and resents it: Islam's golden era of the Arab caliphate, the Crusades, the Mongol devastation, the rise of the Ottomans, World War I, the carving up of the Middle East by Europe, and the poverty, weakness, and wars in the Muslim world of the last century. This is the basic and sad narrative taught at every mosque, and it has the benefit of being broadly accurate. — Richard Engel

Thanks to Hillary Clinton, Iran is now the dominant Islamic power in the Middle East, and on the road to nuclear weapons. Hillary Clinton's support for violent regime change in Syria has thrown the country into one of the bloodiest civil wars anyone has ever seen - while giving ISIS a launching pad for terrorism against the West. — Donald Trump

I think Iran is a very dangerous country - very dangerous to Israel, to the Middle East, and also to the United States. They export terrorism. And they also have the ability to manufacture rockets and missiles. — Dutch Ruppersberger

There is always the risk that a conflagration in the Middle East becomes larger and more dangerous. In this scenario, we discover that the Arab Spring was merely the prelude to a deeper and much farther-reaching upheaval in the region that has greater impact on countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia. — Ian Bremmer