Noam Chomsky Quotes

Egypt is the next domino to fall and, as they say, so goes Egypt so goes the Middle East.

The Arab spring reminds me a bit of the decolonisation process where one country gets independence and everybody else wants it. How about us, when do we get it, when do we make our move? And you have a situation where someone has been in power for decades, where the integrity of elections, democracy and security have really not been debated or discussed and most people suspect that elections are rigged and that the democratic rotation that elections are supposed to ensure doesn't really happen. And when this goes on for a while you are sitting on a powder keg.

In Latin America, in the past, it was almost impossible to guarantee democracy. There were military dictatorships, and nowadays there are not so many military dictatorships. Although we have a dictator in Honduras, as a result of a coup, now as a president, he is almost the only one I would say. But again led or managed, gestated by the U.S. government.

Do not forget that the Arab countries, starting with Algeria and Egypt, are the ones that have paid the heaviest toll because of Islamic terror.

The military destabilised my government on politically motivated charges.

Nothing is so common as to see a political upheaval pass practically unnoticed merely because the names of the leaders and their parties remain the same.

China was unique. It was a dictatorship with term limits.... The leadership had virtual total power, but every 10 years, the leadership had to change.... But that has now been turned In its head in the most significant political change in 35 years ....

A victory for the Taliban in Afghanistan would have catastrophic consequences for the world - particularly for South Asia, for Central Asia, and for the Middle East.

Assad has to go. I mean, the way that ISIS can recruit, and the rebels that are in the north, and all the chaos that's happening through a lot of Syria circles around a lot of people that do not like Assad.

I think when the military ousts a sitting president, even if the sitting president is deeply unpopular, that's the definition of a coup.

I worry a little bit about - quote - "regime change." We haven't had a great deal of success with that in years. That's just really difficult.

At the end of the day, Osama bin Laden's interest is not Washington and New York, it's the Middle East. He wants Saudi Arabia. He wants to get rid of the House of Saud. There's a great deal of resentment, even inside the royal family, at the continued military presence of the United States there.

It is bad governments, not bad people, who cause revolutions.

In 2009, pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map, Libya was stable, Egypt was peaceful, Iraq was seeing really a big, big reduction in violence, Iran was being choked by sanctions, Syria was somewhat under control. After four years of Hillary Clinton, what do we have? ISIS has spread across the region and the entire world. Libya is in ruins and our ambassador and his staff were left helpless to die at the hands of savage killers. Egypt was turned over to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, forcing the military to retake control. Iraq is in chaos. Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons.

A difficult regional situation doesn't justify one man's determination to hold onto power. It's clear to me that democratization is a very complicated process.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny; they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

If democracy succeeds in Egypt, other countries will follow. Should the democratic experiment in Egypt be hijacked by the military or anti-democratic Islamist groups, the revolution will fail elsewhere.

The Middle East is gorgeous, but again, politically, I would not want to go there.

A revolution is sometimes necessary, but if revolutions become habitual the country in which they take place is going down-hill

We've got this arc of instability from North Africa to South Asia, and we have to pay close attention to it. And we have to build coalitions, something that I did to take on the Iranian nuclear program, and what I will do as president to make sure that we defeat these terrorist networks.

There are two clocks ticking in Iran. One is the democracy movement clock which is ticking now faster than it was but it's got a lot of catching up to do. And then there's the clock that's ticking towards a nuclear weaponry.

The fear is that we'll move in the direction from being a democracy to an oligarchy.

Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom.

The good news is that there is strong movement in this direction of shifting from domination systems to partnership systems. Over the past several hundred years, one progressive movement after another has challenged traditions of domination - from the 18th century "rights of man" movement challenging the "divinely ordained right" of kings to rule their "subjects" to today's environmental movement challenging the once hallowed "conquest of nature."

When you think of power, you think the state has power. When you look at it in terms of revolution, in terms of the state, you think of it in terms of Russia, the Soviet Union, and how those who struggled for power actually became victims of the state, prisoners of the state, and how that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We have to think of revolution much more in terms of transitions from one epoch to another.