Najib Razak Quotes

The Arab Spring is over. The days of the protesters with laptops and BlackBerrys in Tahrir Square are long gone.

Certainly we've seen the enormous changes across the whole of the Middle East. The democratic genie is out of the bottle.

The 'Arab Spring' is the most spectacular example of the dispersal of power.

None of us is certain about the outcome of the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring I think we will look back whether it's two years, five years, ten or fifteen. And say it's a good thing.

The most striking thing is that even before Osama bin Laden was killed, he seemed largely irrelevant to the Arab Spring.

Revolutions rarely end up as positively as they begin.

The so called “Arab Spring” … is really a situation which is creating more threats so far than positive incentives.

Muslims have been subjected to so many tyrants and oppressive regimes. That's what the Arab Spring was about, but the problem comes in trying to direct a revolution.

The Arab world is erupting, which is extraordinary, and to see it happen is like watching rings spreading on a pool - it goes out; it varies so much. The spontaneity is wonderful, but very often, if it's not well organized, it breaks up, and it peters out.

The Arab Spring showed that people are not going to wait for an American president to make good on his big talk about democracy and human rights; they are going to fight for those rights themselves and overthrow pro-American dictators who stand in their way.

The Arab Awakening or Arab Spring has transformed the geopolitical landscape.

Lebanon is restless, Syria got its walking papers, Egypt is scheduling elections with more than one candidate, and even Saudi Arabia, whose rulers are perhaps more terrified of women than rulers anywhere else in the world, allowed limited municipal elections.

Had you asked an expert on the Middle East what changes would be likely to tke place in 2011, almost none would have predicted the Arab Spring and none would have chosen Tunisia as the flashpoint.

Rebellions broke out, from the full-scale political revolution of Dorr’s rebellion in Rhode Island to urban violence and protest, often by out of work whites taking out their anger on African Americans or Irish Americans. In response, leaders had to come to terms with the role of force in a democracy.

We are not a failed Arab republic, so we should not fear Arab Spring. We should embrace Arab Spring. That's what I hope Saudi Arabia will do.

Few, if any, political analysts predicted the Arab Spring. The raw energy of millions of protestors in the streets of Tunis and Cairo came as a surprise to many who believed that Arabs were essentially reconciled to their governments and non-democratic rule.

Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom.

And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority.

I think this is really a defining moment for the Arab world. The problem is, it is all going to be about blood, sweat and tears. In certain countries it may be just sweat, and in some countries sweat and tears, and in some countries, as you can see, a lot of blood. I think initial instability is something that we are all extremely nervous of.

The old bastions of the post-communist regime collapsed before my very eyes. The monsters who had kept Ukraine in a criminal state left the stage.

Now in its third year in office, the Obama Administration has never championed the cause of human rights. Its slow reaction in June 2009 to the stealing of the election in Iran and the birth of the 'Green Movement' there, and its delay in backing the rebellions in Egypt, Libya, and Syria, are evidence of this problem.

I've never conspired to overthrow the government; all I did was report on the Arab Spring and suggest that something similar might happen in Ethiopia if the authoritarian regime didn't reform.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.