Douglas Alexander Quotes

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 revolutions of the Arab Spring happened because people realized they were the power.

As you know with the Arab Spring, there were no dividends.

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.

It's interesting to me that the Arab Spring started in Tunisia, and in the marches, people were singing 'Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.'

Bin Laden always wanted to get rid of Mubarek and Ben Ali and Gaddafi and so on, claiming that they were all infidels working for America, and in fact, it was millions of ordinary people who peacefully, more or less - certainly in the case of Tunisia and Egypt - got rid of them.

The Egyptian experience suggests that social media can greatly accelerate the death of already dying authoritarian regimes.

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

King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.

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.

There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.

We must remember, elections are short-term efforts. Revolutions are long-term projects.

And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

Every revolution, bloody or not, has two phases. The first phase is defined by the struggle for freedom, the second by the struggle for power and revenge on the votaries of the ancien regime.

The so-called Arab Spring has proved that the fall of a Mubarak-like presidency does not mean the immediate rise of democracy. In spite of this, I am confident that Egypt will not return to an authoritarian governing system again, and that, with some time, it will achieve its democratic goals.

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

The Arab awakening was driven by youth, organized by technology, and fired by a hunger for political change.

It's always the small people who change things. It's never the politicians or the big guys. I mean, who pulled down the Berlin wall? It was all the people in the streets. The specialists didn't have a clue the day before.

The best revolutions are unplanned, and the most democratic are leaderless.

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

Progressive change in this country has never come from above.

The Welfare Party will come to power either peacefully or with bloodshed.

Without destruction of the State, there is no revolution.