Wadah Khanfar Quotes

When the Islamic revolution began in 1979 under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, it aroused considerable admiration in the Arab street. It presented a model of organised popular action that deposed one of the region's most tyrannical regimes. The people of the region discerned in this revolution new hope for freedom and change.

A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all.

If things do not change, there will be nothing left to change. Either power must pass to the people or everything will perish.

The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.

Communications devices were always used to effect change, to effect revolution. Telephone, telegraph - these all seemed like very big enhancements at the time.

We're on the cusp, on the brink, of enormous change in this country.

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.

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.

Progressive change in this country has never come from above.

… a near revolutionary change in the democratic process

Men start revolutionary changes for reasons connected with their private lives.

Havana.- If 1959 was the Year of Liberation, 1960 was the Year of the Agrarian Reform. The nation lived days of intense transformations, not only political but, also, in every aspect of social and individual activity of its citizens.

Democracy is a revolutionary process.

You would be wrong to assume democracy would be the only alternative if the old regimes [in the Middle East] fell. There is a much better-organized alternative already waiting, and that is ... fundamentalism.

[In the French Revolution] there is much to approve and much to condemn…. An essential change was necessary for the happiness and dignity of a great people, long in a state of degradation.

We live in a scientific revolution. In such an epoch of revolutionary change, those who identity laissez-faire with liberty are enemies, however unwitting, of democracy

The right of the revolution is the right of the future.

We are sons of the Mexican Revolution, a revolution of the poor seeking, bread and justice. Our revolution will not be armed, but we want the existing social order to dissolve, we want a new social order.

It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.

Nothing has ever remained of any revolution but what was ripe in the conscience of the masses.

With people's revolutionary rage, the king will be ousted and a democratic state, Islamic Republic, will be established.

A revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its full potential

Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. And then he wins the world peace prize and becomes president of South Africa. That's how change happens. It's very important not to differentiate protest from the democratic process.

There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.