Vernon A. Walters Quotes

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.

Revolutions are always verbose.

We are going through a terrible crisis. We do not know exactly what is going to happen, but in our hearts the pendulum of the seismograph is already swinging.

Revolutions begin with enthusiasm but often end in tears.

Wars and revolutions cannot be prescribed and the circle of their influence determined in advance.

This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom…. When you, the German people, tore down that wall—a wall that divided East and West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope—walls came tumbling down around the world. From Kiev to Cape Town, prison camps were closed, and the doors of democracy were opened.

When you talk of revolution ... you never talk of the day after.

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

I'm not for real revolutions, because they always bring you the opposite of what you want. You very seldom get what you want if you have a violent revolution.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

The fascination for me writing about crime in Berlin was the idea that there was this much bigger crime taking place in the background, a fantastically epochal moment in history which is just going on. That just sort of makes the whole thing have a greater resonance.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

Revolutions and their aftermaths, of course, are always fluid and fickle times, and the outcome is often perched on a knife's edge.

Innumerable confusions and a feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transition.

Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.

Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought.

In crises, the old is dying and the new has not been born. Hence, the revolts we are witnessing in Egypt and Tunisia, which may yet extend to other countries in the region, are full of uncertainties.

Revolution is a phase, a mood, like spring, and just as spring has its buds and showers, so revolution has its ebullience, its bravery, its hope, and its solidarity. Some of these things pass.

Thailand stands at a crossroads.

I was born in revolution.

I remember when the Berlin Wall fell and suddenly intractable problems get solved.

In pursuing reform, we have to navigate uncharted waters. We may also have to confront protracted problems because we will have to shake up vested interests.

Just like in medicine, when the normal medicine no longer works, one resorts to surgery. And the revolutions is like the surgery: It's painful, and it's the last resort for nations.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

The recognition that things that are not sustainable will eventually come to an end does not give us much of a guide to whether the transition will be calm or exciting.