Quotes & Sayings About Tunisia

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

Tunisia is always ready to turn the page. — Habib Bourguiba

There's always Tunisia. Amid the smoking ruins of the Middle East, there is that one encouraging success story. — Elliott Abrams

The fact that this organisation is called the Islamic State reveals something even deeper. In fact, it implies that every single Islamist party in Egypt, Iraq or Tunisia are not really representing Islam and Muslim people. Nowadays, political Islam is going through a crisis, however this crisis is necessary, for it will lead to a changing way of thinking. In order to make it out of this dead-end, reviewing political Islam becomes mandatory. — Tariq Ramadan

The problem with what we call the 'Arab spring' is that these are very nationalistic experiences. Tunisians are concerned with Tunisia, Egyptians concerned with Egypt and so on. — Tariq Ramadan

In Tunisia the Americans had to pay a stiff price for their experience, but it brought rich dividends. Even at that time, the American generals showed themselves to be very advanced in the tactical handling of their forces, although we had to wait until the Patton Army in France to see the most astonishing achievements in mobile warfare. — Erwin Rommel

I will never forget my first game for England at the World Cup, It was against Turkey ... no I mean Tunisia. — David Seaman

Tunisia is extremely dependent on economic conditions in Europe, which is why it also experienced shockwaves from the euro crisis. — Alvaro De Vasconcelos

In the case of Tunisia, it was indeed this single act that sparked what had been long-standing active protest movements and moved them forward. But that's not so unusual. Let's look at our own history. Take the civil rights movement. There had been plenty of concern and activism about violent repression of blacks in the South, and it took a couple of students sitting in at a lunch counter to really set it off. Small acts can make a big difference when there is a background of concern, understanding, and preliminary activism. — Noam Chomsky

I'm working 24 hours a day. I have had a house in Tunisia for 20 years, and I never have time to go because there are collections, fittings. — Azzedine Alaia

Tunisia is small - just ten million, no great natural resources. — Elliott Abrams

Al Qaeda's message that violence, terrorism and extremism are the only answer for Arabs seeking dignity and hope is being rejected each day in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and throughout the Arab lands. — Elliott Abrams

In crises, the old is dying and the new has not been born. Hence, the revolts we are witnessing in Egypt and Tunisia, which may yet extend to other countries in the region, are full of uncertainties. — Jose Maria Aznar

Israel no longer has allies in Egypt and in Tunisia, we are saying to the Zionist enemies that times have changed and that the time of the Arab Spring, the time of the revolution, of dignity and of pride has arrived. — Ismail Haniyeh

Not a lot of people know about Tunisia. Sarah Palin thinks it's the name of one of Obama's kids. — Bill Maher

Recent events in the Middle East and North Africa clearly show just how dangerous the world is, and how great the challenges facing the intelligence community are going to be in the future as threats to U.S. national security continuously evolve. The U.S. intelligence community did not foresee the sudden collapse of the pro-U.S. regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, the eruption of a civil war in Libya, and the escalating wave of street protests across the Middle East. Then again, no one else in the U.S. government or among our allies abroad did either. — Matthew M. Aid

I dream of a free, democratic, peaceful Tunisia, a country that can protect its developing identity. — Rashid Al-Ghannushi

Bin Laden always wanted to get rid of Mubarek and Ben Ali and Gaddafi and so on, claiming that they were all infidels working for America, and in fact, it was millions of ordinary people who peacefully, more or less - certainly in the case of Tunisia and Egypt - got rid of them. — Robert Fisk

Less than a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, al-Qaida attacks were continuing: the firebombing of a synagogue in Tunisia in April, a bomb outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi in June. — Bill Dedman

There's one thing that's been 'learned' maybe from Tunisia and Egypt that I think is a mistake. And that is that the existing ruler has to resign. He doesn't have to resign. You take all the supports out from under him; he falls. No matter what he wants to do. This is the distinction in the analyses between nonviolent coercion in which he has to resign, but he's forced into it, and disintegration when the regime simply falls apart. There's nobody left with enough power to resign. — Gene Sharp

Fear of Tunisia's democracy led Isis to launch an attack on its tourist economy The nation's future will be bleak if the cruise ships don't return to disgorge their passengers — Anonymous

My family were very poor. I am one of nine siblings: two girls and seven boys. Only my brother and I play in Europe, and then three more work in Europe, and another plays in Tunisia. This family is a footballing family, but our lives have not always been good. — Yaya Toure

In Tunisia, where women have long enjoyed greater rights than many of their Arab neighbors, women pushed for and won a new electoral code that guarantees women will make up half of a candidates' list for office. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Tunisia's responsibility, and especially that of its political and intellectual elites, is enormous. All the protagonists of the nation's social, cultural, economic and political life must work to overcome useless and counterproductive polarisation, and to find solutions to domestic, regional and international problems. — Tariq Ramadan

What Tunisia urgently needs, is freedom and the building of a real democracy. — Rashid Al-Ghannushi

The Arab spring confirmed that peaceful change is possible and so reinforced the vision of political Islam. The impact of this went beyond the Brotherhood to include the Salafist tendency in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya that had questioned the democratic path. — Wadah Khanfar

Libya. A Tunisian street vendor setting himself aflame to protest police brutality in December 2010 ushered in what has become known as the Arab Spring. Mass demonstrations protesting longstanding authoritarian rule in Egypt, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, and Libya in 2011 stirred national and international debates. — Karen A. Mingst

I once rode a motorcycle across Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco! — Cara Black

It was an identity crisis. I was born and raised in France, but I never really felt French, so I needed to find something that I was more connected to. I used to go back to Tunisia every summer, but I was more into the language, my Arabic roots. — EL Seed

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

In Tunisia, the so-called Yasmin revolution has led to the installation of a relatively moderate Islamic government. Whether or not that means democracy will, however, only be put to the test if and when the time comes for another election, which the opposition may win. — Martin Van Creveld

Literacy in Tunisia is almost 100%. It's amazing - no country in the region or even in Asia can match Tunisia in education. — Mo Ibrahim

If there is any way you can get colder than you do when you sleep in a bedding roll on the ground in a tent in southern Tunisia two hours before dawn, I don't know about it. — A.J. Liebling

You can understand Tunisia revolution as a failure to censor the internet. And Libya had that failure too. It's very difficult for governments that are autocratic and don't have broad popular support to be in power when a lot of people have these devices. That was what Arab Spring was about, that people could express this and lead to revolution. — Eric Schmidt

Tunisia will continue to be a source of influence, not through its size but through the ideas and the models that it represents. — Rashid Al-Ghannushi

I met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, visited our allies in the Arab Gulf, traveled to Tunisia and Iraq, met with President Petro Poroshenko in Ukraine, and visited our allies in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. — Kevin McCarthy

I believe democracy will succeed in Tunisia, but I also believe that it will succeed in the other Arab Spring countries. — Rashid Al-Ghannushi

Together they'd run away. Together they could find a place to call home. Together they'd finally form their own constellation and never break apart again. He would be her starlight again and she his sun. — Hella Grichi

If you look at the list of the top wheat importers for 2010, almost half of them are Middle Eastern regimes: Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Morocco, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Tunisia. Egypt is the number-one importer of wheat in the entire world. Tunisia leads the entire world in per capita wheat consumption. So it's no wonder that the revolutions began with Tunisians waving baguettes in the streets and Egyptians wearing helmets made of bread. — Annia Ciezadlo

There was a woman in Tunisia called Madame Pinot. She was a midwife and had helped in the birth of my siblings and me. I assisted her. I helped women give birth to a lot of babies when I was very young. — Azzedine Alaia

Some 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 Vltchek

For two thousand years, the closer to Carthage (roughly the site of modern-day Tunis) the greater the level of development. Because urbanization in Tunisia started two millennia ago, tribal identity based on nomadism - which the medieval historian Ibn Khaldun said disrupted political stability - is correspondingly weak. Indeed, after the Roman general Scipio defeated Hannibal in 202 B.C. outside Tunis, he dug a demarcation ditch, or fossa regia, that marked the extent of civilized territory. The fossa regia remains relevant to the current Middle East crisis. Still visible in places, it runs from Tabarka on Tunisia's northwestern coast southward, and turns directly eastward to Sfax, another Mediterranean port. The — Robert D. Kaplan

I was born on April 1, 1933, in Constantine, Algeria, which was then part of France. My family, originally from Tangier, settled in Tunisia and then in Algeria in the 16th century after having fled Spain during the Inquisition. — Claude Cohen-Tannoudji

I will not be standing for office. I'm nearing 70; there are younger people within our movement. I just wish to contribute intellectually to the historic process of taking Tunisia from the era of repression to one of democracy. — Rashid Al-Ghannushi

We in Tunisia have no problem with respecting other people's religion, and we have a long tradition of that. — Rashid Al-Ghannushi

Drafting of the constitutions is interesting and the discussions around them revealing in many ways. I take it as a discussion of very important symbols revealing many different problems. My take at the beginning was to warn that Tunisia might be the only successful country, the only one to justify us in talking about the spring, while all the other countries were less successful, if not failing. Now the point is that even in Tunisia it is not going to be easy, and this is where we have a problem. — Tariq Ramadan

I would like to extend to you our deep appreciation and thanks for the position the United States has taken in support of the democratization process that has taken place in Tunisia, in Egypt, and what is attempting to take place in Libya. — Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani

Women in the Arab world have a rich history in their active participation in political change from the Algeria revolution against the French occupation to the most recent revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya among other countries. The question is not their participation. Their question is the incorporation of women's voices fully in the new definitions of the countries where change has happened. — Zainab Salbi

Tunisia was not for the United States an important country in the way, let's say, Algeria was because of its gas, because of its size, because of its struggle against terrorism that sometimes turned bloody. — Elliott Abrams

To me, the success of the cyberactivists in Tunisia is actually very interesting, because many of them explicitly rejected any support from Washington. — Evgeny Morozov

The people on the streets of Egypt and Tunisia and Libya and Syria and Iran have done more to defeat the ideology of Al Qaeda than anything that the United States has done. They have shown that there is a third way, that with peaceful protest you can have an end to dictatorship and a role for human dignity, a role for your religious faith in society. — Reza Aslan

I'm the ranking Republican on the foreign aid appropriations subcommittee, so I know Tunisia well. — Lindsey Graham

I hope that with the success of the transition to democracy in Tunisia that we will export to Egypt a working democratic model. — Rashid Al-Ghannushi