Bashir Assad Quotes

The external support can never substitute internal support, the example that we have to look at very well is Egypt and Tunisia ; they have all the support from the West and from the Gulf and from most of the countries of the world. When they don't have support within their country, they couldn't continue more than - how many weeks ? - three weeks. So, the only reason we stand here for two years and a half is because we have internal support, public support.

They are these: sufficient food, sufficient armament, and the confidence of the people. Without the confidence of the people there would be no government.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

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

No war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

It is doubtful that President Mubarak or the Saudi Royal family will allow elections that might sweep them from office.

China has been weakened to an extreme degree, and all we have is the hearts and minds of the people. If we cast them aside, what do we have to sustain our country?

We are not a failed Arab republic, so we should not fear Arab Spring. We should embrace Arab Spring. That's what I hope Saudi Arabia will do.

In reality, you cannot withstand for five years and more against all those countries, the West, and the Gulf states, the petrodollars, and all this propaganda, the strongest media corporations around the world, if you don't have the support of your own people. That's against the reality.

The problem in Burma is the problem in Egypt, the problem you refer to in Yemen, and the problem in a lot of these countries in the world: that you can get stuck in the process of transition, in what’s been called a competitive authoritarian… a pseudo democratic regime.

The Middle East has gone through periods of turmoil before. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were revolutions. When monarchies were collapsing in a number of countries, we had radicals and we had Nasserism. Today it's a little bit more complicated.

It is not our place to decide who should lead the Iraqi people. If Saddam [Hussein] leaves or has to be forced out of power and a new regime brought in, a new leadership brought in, I am confident it will be some combination of people inside the country and outside the country.

In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?

Egypt is in the second day of angry street protests. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is calling for calm. Because nothing calms an enraged Arab country like a powerful woman ordering it around.

It is an unquestionable truth, that the body of the people in every country desire sincerely its prosperity. But it is equally unquestionable that they do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they are frequently led into the grossest of errors, by misinformation and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise.

It would be a huge mistake to abandon democracy promotion. Peaceful political change has been enormously successful in the past years in Eastern European countries as well as in countries like South Korea, South Africa, Chile and Indonesia. However, if possible, the use of force is something to avoid except in cases where genocide is threatened, like Bosnia or Libya or with regimes that threaten our security, like the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.

War that hasn't affected us here, in the way that you would imagine a five-year war would affect a country.

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.

If an angel should be winged from Heaven, on an errand of mercy to our country, the first accents that would glow on his lips would be, Beware! Be cautious! You have everything to lose; nothing to gain. We live under the only government that ever existed which was framed by the unrestrained and deliberate consultations of the people. Miracles do not cluster. That which has happened but once in six thousand years cannot be expected to happen often. Such a government, once gone, might leave a void, to be filled, for ages, with revolution and tumult, riot and despotism.

A king can stand people's fighting but he can't last long if people start thinking.

In all countries with a settled bureaucracy people used to say: The cabinets come and go, but the bureaus remain.

There is no suggestion of regime change; quite the contrary, this is an initiative to help people and to help governments who are inclined toward change.

The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and as they become incorporated with national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion.

No nation can last which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart.

What country is stabler than Iran? Where else in the world would an assassinated prime minister be so quickly replaced?