I. M. Pei Quotes

My family lived in Egypt from 1993 to 1996.

Egypt is a sovereign nation.

I'd love to go and visit the Mosque in Mecca again, just for the sheer beauty of it, not for God - much the way a non-Catholic might go to Vatican City because of the beauty of the buildings and the artifacts.

I love the Middle East and have been lucky enough to visit a few of the countries like Egypt, Lebanon, Jordon and the U.A.E.

I love Spain. It's my favorite country that I've been to and I've traveled quite a bit. I've been really fortunate as an adult to have been to a lot of interesting places like Egypt and China.

When I was a boy in Desuq, Egypt, a city on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, about 50 miles east of Alexandria, my family lived steps away from the local landmark, a mosque named for a 13th-century Sufi sheik.

If you're inclined to dismiss L.A. as a place of unrelenting vapidity and generic 1980s architecture, then you're doing yourself and L.A. a huge disservice, and you're just not looking hard enough.

Damascus was the seat of the Ummayad Caliphate in the 7th and 8th centuries.

Baghdad is altogether built of chrome-yellow kiln-dried bricks.

I like the south of Spain, notably for the Moorish influence and the weather.

I lived in the Muslim world for 10 years.

The superiority of the Arab civilization, especially in Spain and Sicily, was the chief agency which awakened Europe after six centuries of barbarism.

Cairo had not yet become the stamping-ground of tourists. Foreigners were curiosities, and the true believer's hatred for the accursed Giaour, or "Christian dog," was something that he was very proud of. A fanatic was liable to make trouble at any moment.

Cairo, mother of cities ... mistress of broad provinces and fruitful lands, boundless in multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendor, the meeting-place of comer and goer, the stopping-place of feeble and strong. ... She [Cairo] surges as the waves of the sea with her throngs of folk and can scarce contain them

There were no less than twenty thousand shops in Cairo, all of which belong to the sultan (al-Mustansir). Many shops are rented for as much as ten dinars a month, and none for less than two. There is no end of caravanserais, bathhouses and other public buildings - all property of the sultan, for no one owns any property except houses and what he himself builds….In the midst of the houses in the city are gardens and orchards watered by wells. In the sultan's harem are the most beautiful gardens imaginable. Water-wheels have been constructed to irrigate these gardens. There are trees planted and pleasure parks built even on the roofs …. All the houses of Cairo are built separate one from another, so that no one's trees or outbuildings are against anyone else's walls. Cairo has four cathedral mosques where men pray on Fridays.

I shall not return to Constantinople until I have conquered Egypt!

I am familiar with what goes on in the Arab countries, and I'm sad to say that most of us want to annihilate Israel. We want to kill all the Israelis... Do you know what they used to say in the mosques in Egypt? "We want to go to the White House and turn it into the Islamic House..." We call upon the Arab countries to stop teaching hatred to the Arab children.

Egypt is a large, complex, very important country.

I got my initiation into the Middle East in 1969 when I went there to teach at the American University in Cairo for two years.

The Islamic culture is a question mark for many people across the world, but Qatar opens its doors to supporters all over the world so they can learn from this old culture.

I think the first time I watched 'Aladdin' was when I was still in Egypt, because I was born in Cairo.

I've been to Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait for brief visits at conferences, and they are very interesting countries.

Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation.

There are millions and millions of Sufis who have existed in Islamic history and have the deepest impact on every aspect of Islamic culture and civilization to philosophy to art to science to social structure to economics who have not met the destiny of al-Hallaj.

Similar problems are arising in Egypt too. The question is whether the military will release its grip which has been extremely strong for the past 60 years. So this is happening all over the region and particularly strikingly in Pakistan.