Egyptian Politics Quotes

An Egyptian newspaper once publicly identified me as the C.I.A. station chief in Cairo. It seemed so stupid at the time. I was only 24, a little young to be a station chief, and, of course, I was never with the C.I.A.

I was in prison with the assassins of the former president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, who was killed in 1981. Those who weren't executed in that case were given life sentences, and two of those were with me in prison.

Egyptian political elites are middlemen carrying out the instructions of Washington.

The term 'Muslim Brotherhood'... is an umbrella term for a variety of movements: in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi grabbed full power for himself. Not even the pharaohs had so much authority, to say nothing of his predecessor Hosni Mubarak. This is a catastrophe - it a mockery of the revolution that brought him to power and an act that leads one to fear the worst.

The president of the Arab Republic of Egypt is the commander of the armed forces, full stop.

When Mohamed Morsi was elected president of Egypt in 2012, many in the country, including me, were hopeful that he would become a democratic president for all Egyptians - not only for the Muslim Brotherhood.

President el-Sisi of Egypt took over in a very complicated environment. He needed to give a new direction. It is quite a difficult job.

The best way to marginalize the Muslim Brotherhood [in Egypt] is in the ballot box, not through arrests and killing people.

I personally think President [Hosni] Mubarak, who's done a lot for Egypt, should acknowledge that his time has come and step down right away.

Hosni Mubarak... his constitution is not democratic, but he is democratic. We can voice our opinions now. The press is free.

Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood overestimated the extent to which Egyptians identify with Islam. And now, with their violent repression of the Brotherhood, the generals who ousted Morsi risk underestimating it.

In 2012, President Obama was faced with a new Egyptian leader, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead of applying pressure to root him out, President Obama waived U.S. law and provided taxpayer aid to prop up the most radical elements within Egypt.

If you said to people you can cast a secret ballot on whether to turn back the clock and have Morsi in power again, I don't think very many people in Washington would turn back that clock.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, like his most recent predecessors Mohamed Morsi and Hosni Mubarak, rarely mention the Sinai Peninsula other than to celebrate its liberation from Israeli occupation in 1982.

The Egyptian flood is upon us. Pharaoh had just as much business to pursue the Israelites as we have to meddle in Egypt …. However, our policy must now be determined by the effect which the triumph of the Madhi would have on our Mohammedan subjects.

The Egyptian military plays positive and negative roles in Egypt, but the most significant single thing it did under Mubarak was to guarantee an Islamist victory once he left the scene.

On March 5, 2011, protesters stormed the Egyptian state security headquarters. In real time, activists shared their discoveries on Twitter as they moved through a building that had until recently been one of the Mubarak regime's largest torture facilities.

Mubarak came to power as a hero who fought bravely in Egypt's wars and headed the nation's air force.

There are people who believe in Egypt that I - I'm actually - I'm getting paid by external powers and external intelligence entities in order to use satire to bring down the government.

In the 1990s, Islamists in Algeria won elections like the Brotherhood did in Egypt. The Algerian military refused to allow the Islamists to take power. A war erupted, killing between 100,000 to 200,000 people, depending on which estimates are to be believed.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a religiously conservative group. They are a minority in Egypt. They are not a majority of the Egyptian people, but they have a lot of credibility because all the other liberal parties have been smothered for 30 years.

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salifist parties are a real force in the Egyptian society.

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

Morsi has appointed himself as Egypt’s new Pharaoh.