Fidel Castro Quotes

We shall remember Gaddafi our whole lives as a great fighter, a revolutionary and a martyr.

I have been to Libya and walked the streets of Benghazi myself.

Yes, Gaddafi was a ruthless dictator and supporter of terrorism during his 40-year reign in Libya, but he had become an ally of the United States in the fight against radical jihadism after 9/11.

Okay, Libya. President Obama supported the uprising, correct?... No, that's a different one. I've got to go back, got all this stuff twirling around in my head.

The situation in Syria is quite different from Libya.

King of the Arabs

Nasser is an Arab Mussolini.

I see Libya as a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and a sovereign State of the nearly 200 members of the United Nations.

My parents' generation grew up high on the Arab nationalism that Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser brandished in the 1950s.

We didn't put a single boot on the ground, and [Muammar] Gaddafi was deposed. The Libyans turned out for one of the most successful, fairest elections that any Arab country has had. They elected moderate leaders.

Libya as a country is a relatively new concept. The period of Libya as a modern nation really starts after World War II.

History may someday record that the Arab awakening that began with the Arab revolt of 1916 against the Ottomans ended about a century later with a whimper.

I've participated in many demonstrations since I was a child. When I was at medical college, I was fighting King Farouk, then British colonization, against Nasser, against Sadat who pushed me into prison, Mubarak who pushed me into exile. I never stopped.

Look at what the Omar of Qatar is doing, for example - the King of Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain. There are reform movements taking place, efforts to broaden the political participation of the populations of the region.

The driving force for the Arabs is hatred of Israel. Hatred of the Jewish people.

King Abdullah is a reformer.

Israel no longer has allies in Egypt and in Tunisia, we are saying to the Zionist enemies that times have changed and that the time of the Arab Spring, the time of the revolution, of dignity and of pride has arrived.

We believe that Lebanon has been the first real experience for all the Arabs.

the awakening of the Arab nation, and the effort of the Jews to reconstitute the ancient kingdom of Israel…. These movements are destined to fight each other continually until one of them wins.

There was a time when the deal between the Saudis and us made sense: after 1945, we need oil, lots, cheap, in guaranteed amounts and at stable prices. In return, we protected them from regional and extra-regional predators - Nasser, the Soviets, etc. They became rich, we powered industry. Good deal. Problems started later: as soon as the kingdom stabilized, King Faisal conceived a great design of taking over Sunni Islam to the Wahhabi creed, and Saudi imperial goals.

Israel does not need to resort to provocation [to have a war to bring down Abdul Nasser. Egypt itself supplies the provocations, continuously.

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.

In Arab countries where rebellion has succeeded in ousting leaders (or will), painful makeovers lie ahead. None will get through the change quickly. Most will stumble over daunting political and economic challenges. Some may fail. All will grapple to find the right blend of freedom and faith.

We want industry to be in the public sector, to change the power structure of our society...We have not yet carved out of public enterprise a wide enough area of management decision which ought properly to be brought within the ambit of the workers themselves.

Take immediate and decisive steps to better the condition of the peasant. Abandon the system of war-time Communism by which we practically took from the peasant all his surplus, and sometimes what was not his surplus but part of his necessary subsistence.