MOHAMMED REZA PAHLAVI

Let me tell you quite bluntly that this king business has given me personally nothing but headaches.

My main mistake was to have made an ancient people advance by forced marches toward independence, health, culture, affluence, comfort.

My advisers built a wall between myself and my people. I didn't realize what was happening. When I woke up, I had lost my people.

Shah is a kind of magic word with the Persian people.

I wasn't the man. If you want someone to kill people, you had to find somebody else.

To be a major power, a country must have nuclear weapons.

We wish to avoid at all costs the recurrent experience in some democratic countries where the people give the governments the opposition

Women are important in a man's life only if they're beautiful and charming and keep their femininity.... What do these feminists want? What do you want? You say equality .... . You're equal in the eyes of the law but not, excuse my saying so, in ability

You Westerners simply don't understand the philosophy behind my power. The Iranians think of their sovereign as a father. What you call 'my celebration' was to them the celebration of Iran's father. The monarchy is the cement of our unity. In celebrating our twenty-five hundreth anniversary, all I was doing was celebrating the anniversary of my country, of which I am the father. Now, if to you, a father is inevitably a dictator, that is your problem, not mine..

I want the standard of living in Iran in ten years' time to be exactly on a level with that in Europe today. In twenty years' time we shall be ahead of the United States.

A person who does not enter the new party [The Shah’s Party]... is either an individual who belongs to an illegal organization, or is related to the outlaw Tudeh Party, or in other words is a traitor. Such an individual belongs in an Iranian prison, or if he desires, he can leave the country tomorrow... because he is not an Iranian, he has no nation, and his activities are illegal and punishable according to law.

They want liberalization! I'll give them liberalization. I'll loosen the screws until the Americans beg me to tighten them again.

Iran is not ready for Western-style democracy.

My people have every kind of freedom, except the freedom to betray.

The Times and the Guardian accuse us of operating a police-state. The BBC Persian programme has made similar allegations, saying that countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia should be denied access to Western military technology. What are the bloody fools on about? Do they seriously regard Iraq, or Algeria, or Libya as liberal regimes?.

... the Saudis have never shown any respect for human rights, either now or in the past. Even a petty burglar faces having one of his hands chopped off. The liberal press in America prefers to ignore all this, although they don't hesitate to blacken the reputation of Iran..

How can you hope to build up a nation by fragmenting its politics into opposing camps? Whatever one group builds, the other will endeavour to destroy..

To be first in the Middle East is not enough. We must raise ourselves to the level of a great world power..

Henry Kissinger is possessed of a truly superior intelligence, in addition to which he has two qualities which, unfortunately, many great men lack: he is able to listen and he has a very subtle sense of humor.

No doubt history will say that Eisenhower was a soldier. For my part, I will remember, above all, his goodness. He was a fundamentally good man who knew how to be loved by the Americans.

The world petroleum story is one of the most inhuman known to man: in it, elementary moral and social principles are jeered at. If powerful oil trusts no longer despoil and humiliate our country it is not because these predators have become human, but because we have won a hard-fought battle which has been going on since the beginning of the century.

No people can live in the past - not even in its own past. But if it no longer has a link with its history, it must of necessity perish. Persia, crowded with hardship and glory, ordeals and hopes. With the help of the Almighty, the lessons of the past constitute the best guide for the citizens of the future.

The consequences of the Ayatollah's blood-thirsty fiasco could be disastrous for the whole of Islam and particularly for Shiism. The systematic destruction, in the name of religion, of a state and a society which vigilantly safeguarded the peace, could have effects in this part of the world which would be disastrous for sincere believers of the Koran, and even for those who believe less wholeheartedly. The murderous megalomania and the agitation of Qom, combined with the miserable dictatorship of a handful of mullahs, are, I insist, all in direct contradiction with the essential principles of Islam.

You approach the Mullahs as if they are normal people. They are not. You see them in your own image; you should not.

For all its apparent tolerance, the USA maintains a peculiar balance between the forces of capitalism and democracy. To achieve this I feel sure the country is guided by some hidden force; an organization working in secrecy, powerful enough to dispose of the Kennedys and of anyone else who gets in its way.