Arab Spring Quotes

• I think some of this fascination with the 'Arab Spring' is just a grand experiment with Israel's survival.

  John Bolton

  Spring, Thinking, Israel

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• Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality.

  Eric Alterman

  Spring, Uganda, Egypt

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• We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Inspiring, Women, 4th Of July

  Declaration of Sentiments, First Woman's Rights

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• In any conflict area, it is always the women who are the first point of attack. But I think the more they have seen of oppression and violence, they have gotten more brave, more strong, more fearless than they were. You see this refusal to just keep quiet and do as you are told.

  Fatima Bhutto

  Leadership, Wisdom, Strong

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• Revolution is like a love story. When you are in love, you become a much better person. And when you are in revolution, you become a much better person.

  Alaa Al Aswany

  Spring, Love You, Stories

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• The riveting moral power of the Arab Spring comes from its homegrown quality. This is about Arabs overcoming fear to become agents of their own transformation and liberation.

  Roger Cohen

  Spring, Quality, Overcoming

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• No matter what's happening in the Middle East - the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment - the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.

  Abdallah II

  Spring, Emotional, Issues

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• Social media allows people to connect. So instead of reading about the Arab Spring, I can have students following along, in real-time, with what is happening.

  Steven Anderson

  Spring, Real, Reading

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• The international community cannot stand by and watch the massacre of Libyan protesters. In Rwanda we watched. In Kosovo we acted.

  Anne-Marie Slaughter

  Spring, Community, Watches

  Anne-Marie Slaughter @SlaughterAM, twitter.com. February 24, 2011.

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• It is the growing periphery of the Arab world - the masses at its margins, not its feeble and decaying center - that is shaping the future of the region.

  Wadah Khanfar

  Spring, World, Growing

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• I think the Internet and technology in general has changed everything. We can see it overseas even more with the Arab Spring and so forth.

  Jane Fonda

  Spring, Technology, Thinking

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• The Arab spring reminds me a bit of the decolonisation process where one country gets independence and everybody else wants it. How about us, when do we get it, when do we make our move? And you have a situation where someone has been in power for decades, where the integrity of elections, democracy and security have really not been debated or discussed and most people suspect that elections are rigged and that the democratic rotation that elections are supposed to ensure doesn't really happen. And when this goes on for a while you are sitting on a powder keg.

  Kofi Annan

  Country, Integrity, Spring

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• Democracy or breakdown in Syria would change the whole Middle East overnight.

  Paul Krugman

  Spring, Democracy, Middle East

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• I believe democracy will succeed in Tunisia, but I also believe that it will succeed in the other Arab Spring countries.

  Rashid al-Ghannushi

  Country, Spring, Believe

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• I think that the drama of people rising up demanding their own freedom is one that resonates very deeply with America. I think that President Barack Obama has tried and would like to find a way to relate to the Arab Spring, but I think he also wants to be, rightly, very careful that we don't take it over. It is very important that they own this. He is trying to influence it this way but without, "We're so never going to go to the extreme of Iraq and putting boots on the ground again."

  Thomas Friedman

  Spring, Drama, Thinking

  3 Copy quote

• From the streets of Cairo and the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, from the busy political calendar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, social media was not only sharing the news but driving it.

  Dan Rather

  Wall, Spring, Japan

  "I’ve Discovered Facebook" by Dan Rather, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 16, 2011.

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• There are an awful lot of things going on that need understanding and explanation, but - to put it mildly - the world is a mess.

  Madeleine Albright

  Spring, Reality, Community

  "Face the Nation" with Bob Schieffer, www.cbsnews.com. July 27, 2014.

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• 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.

  Abdallah II

  Spring, Thinking, Years

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• There are going to be a lot of questions, not just in my country, but across the Middle East. Is Israel going to continue to be "Fortress Israel"? Or, as we all hope, become accepted into the neighborhood, which I believe is the only way we can move forward in harmony. And no matter what's happening in the Middle East - the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment - the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.

  Abdallah II

  Country, Spring, Moving Forward

  Interview with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. September 22, 2011.

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• If you look not just at the Arab spring, but at what I call the youth spring that has started in Europe, young people are starting to find a voice, and they are not looking to the traditional media to reflect that.

  Shane Smith

  Spring, Media, Europe

  "Shane Smith: 'I want to build the next CNN with Vice - it's within my grasp'". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. March 23, 2013.

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• No one will remember that President Obama supported the Arab Spring if it eventually fails and the region collapses back into the political Dark Ages. If we actively engage these movements with advice, with money, and, when necessary, with military force, then we get a vote in how it all turns out.

  Sebastian Junger

  Spring, Military, Dark

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• I'm optimistic, though. Now, with the Arab Spring, I think that people in the region are beginning to overturn some of these clichés, and Western editors are starting to catch up. We're seeing some exceptions to the stereotypes, like Elizabeth Rubin's great piecein Newsweek, "The Feminists in the Middle of Tahrir Square." But an article like that shouldn't be the exception. It should be the rule.

  Annia Ciezadlo

  Spring, Optimistic, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• There is always the risk that a conflagration in the Middle East becomes larger and more dangerous. In this scenario, we discover that the Arab Spring was merely the prelude to a deeper and much farther-reaching upheaval in the region that has greater impact on countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.

  Ian Bremmer

  Country, Spring, Iran

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The problem with what we call the 'Arab spring' is that these are very nationalistic experiences. Tunisians are concerned with Tunisia, Egyptians concerned with Egypt and so on.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Spring, Egypt, Tunisia

  Source: www.opendemocracy.net

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• Time and again-from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the events of 9/11 to the onset of the Arab Spring-events have caught the experts, whether in government or on the outside, completely by surprise. Business owners with comparable performance records go bust. Brokers lose their clients. Physicians get sued for malpractice. Yet think-tankers and policy wonks continue to opine, never pausing to reflect on-or apologize for-their spotty records.

  Andrew Bacevich

  Spring, Thinking, Government

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