Arabian Quotes

• Throughout my career, I was to be cast as a frontier girl, an aristocrat, an Arabian, a Eurasian, a Polynesian, and a Chinese.

  Gene Tierney

  Girl, Careers, Chinese

  Gene Tierney, Mickey Herskowitz (1979). “Self-portrait”, Peter Wyden

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• We clearly need to break our addiction on Saudi Arabian oil that is a security threat to the United States.

  Jay Inslee

  Oil, Addiction, United States

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• We were in the Arabian Desert for nine months. And I was having the time of my life. It could have been an archeological expedition, a military expedition.

  Peter O'Toole

  Travel, Military, Nine

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• I have heard that the Saudi Arabians are paying Greenpeace to campaign against Nuclear Power. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

  James Lovelock

  Nuclear, Campaigns, Surprise

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• For me, exploration was a personal venture. I did not go to the Arabian desert to collect plants nor to make a map; such things were incidental. At heart I knew that to write or even to talk of my travels was to tarnish the achievement. I went there to find peace in the hardship of desert travel and the company of desert peoples. I set myself a goal on these journeys, and, although the goal itself was unimportant, its attainment had to be worth every effort and sacrifice... No, it is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worth while the journey.

  Wilfred Thesiger

  Writing, Heart, Sacrifice

  Wilfred Thesiger (2008). “Arabian Sands”, p.236, Penguin

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• Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches.

  Ariel Sharon

  Oil, May, Politician

  "Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement". Book by Robert I. Friedman, 1992.

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• It is impossible for anyone who studies the life and character of the great Prophet of Arabia, who knows how he taught and how he lived, to feel anything but reverence for that mighty Prophet, o­ne of the great messengers of the Supreme. And although in what I put to you I shall say many things which may be familiar to many, yet I myself feel whenever I re-read them, a new way of admiration, a new sense of reverence for that mighty Arabian teacher.

  Annie Besant

  Teacher, Character, Islam

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• If you want to ascend like the Prophet to the sky of immortality, know this very well: Fasting is your Arabian stallion.

  Rumi

  Sky, Want, Fasting

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• Our traditional stories are based on an aristocratic model without a middle class, whereas The Arabian Nights reflect people living in cities, traders, merchants, travelers, with a wide range of personalities.

  Marina Warner

  Night, Class, Cities

  Source: therumpus.net

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• For example, John Law's Mississippi Company venture printed shares, and the money had gone up in smoke when it had been inscribed objects. The inscription made it magic and changed its meaning. That's how objects become charmed in The Arabian Nights, and they are often originally ordinary objects. The carpet is an ordinary, paltry object. The lamp is a rusty old lamp, and the bottles jinns are imprisoned within are old bottles. They are changed by the magic and the jinn's presence, and the jinn's presence is often embodied in the seal or inscription.

  Marina Warner

  Night, Law, Magic

  Source: therumpus.net

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• All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only, - those that happened to be in a line from the Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their founders.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Book, Lines, Vedas

  Sri Aurobindo, Aurobindo Ghose (1993). “The Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo's Teaching and Method of Practice”, p.352, Lotus Press

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• ...the prominent Egyptian government minister, university professor, and writer Taha Hussein...devoted himself to the study of pre-Islamic Arabian poetry and ended up concluding that much of that body of work had been fabricated well after the establishment of Islam in order to lend outside support to Koranic mythology.... [T]he Iranian journalist and diplomat Ali Dashti...repeatedly took his fellow Muslims to task for not questioning the traditional accounts of Muhammad's life, much of which he called myth-making and miracle-mongering.

  Toby Lester

  Islamic, Government, University Professors

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• [The canonization of the Koran involved the] attribution of several, partially overlapping, collections of logia [sayings] (exhibiting a distinctly Mosaic imprint) to the image of a Biblical prophet (modified by the material of the Muhammadan evangelium into an Arabian man of God) with a traditional message of salvation (modified by the influence of Rabbinic Judaism into the unmediated and finally immutable word of God).

  John Wansbrough

  Biblical, Men, Islam

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• Saudi Arabian oil production is at or very near its peak sustainable volume (if it did not, in fact peak almost 25 years ago), and is likely to go into decline in the very foreseeable future. There is only a small probability that Saudi Arabia will ever deliver the quantities of petroleum that are assigned to it in all the major forecasts of world oil production and consumption.

  Matthew Simmons

  Years, Oil, Saudi Arabia

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• I'd have a stable full of Arabian steeds, rooms piled with books, and I'd write out of a magic inkstand, so that my works should be as famous as Laurie's music. I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle,-something heroic, or wonderful,-that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all, some day. I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous; that would suit me, so that is my favorite dream.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Dream, Book, Mean

  Louisa May Alcott (1876). “Little Women: Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy”, p.190

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• We liberate our nation's heart inside of Indonesian independence!! Ibn Saud liberated Arabian's heart inside of Saudi Arabian independence one by one!! Stalin liberated Soviet-Russian's heart inside of Soviet one by one!!

  Sukarno

  Heart, Independence, Soviet

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• Syria is the center of the Arab Orient. It cannot live outside its relationship with the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf countries, Egypt and others. We need economic and investment support from our fellow Arabs the future. Our future is truly tied to the Arab world and the Gulf in particular.

  Burhan Ghalioun

  Country, Support, World

  "Syria Opposition Leader Interview". The Wall Street Journal Interview, www.wsj.com. December 2, 2011.

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• Whatever experimental film aromas cloaked my movies were because I'm a gleefully clumsy, primitive filmmaker. I really like traditional pleasingly narrative films, but I also just couldn't resist throwing in the disruptive. It seems to me that art-house film is at its glorious zenith right now, maybe it can even get better? There's just so many good films, you know Cemetery Of Splendour, Arabian Nights, Miguel Gomes, just so much great work coming out.

  Guy Maddin

  Art, Night, House

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Supporters of Osama bin Laden want to rename the Arabian Sea after bin Laden's death. They want to call it "Martyr's Sea." Please, hiding in your bedroom for six years with the blinds closed? How about "Chicken of the Sea?

  Jay Leno

  Years, Sea, Want

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• Scheherazade, of course, was always in the back of my mind, because she's also a storyteller identified as female who tells a lot of anti-female stories. There's a parade in The Arabian Nights of sorceresses, adulteresses, ghouls, sirens, harridans.

  Marina Warner

  Night, Ghouls, Mind

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The real cause of the great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations, such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Arabian Empire, is a profound modification in the ideas of the peoples .... The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought .... The present epoch is one of these critical moments in which the thought of mankind is undergoing a process of transformation.

  Gustave Le Bon

  Real, Fall, Memorable

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• Many of the enchanted things in the book are lamps, carpets, sofas, gems, brass rings. It is a rather different landscape than the fairy tale landscape of the West. Though we have interiors and palaces, we don't have bustling cities, and there isn't the emphasis on the artisan making things. The ambiance from which they were written was an entirely different one. The Arabian Nights comes out of a huge world of markets and trade. Cairo, Basra, Damascus: trades and skills.

  Marina Warner

  Book, Night, Skills

  Source: therumpus.net

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• There are a range of women not represented in the Western fairy tale tradition. Husband-beaters are particularly interesting, as well as male pederasts. Children are often told in The Arabian Nights, "This man likes to abduct boys, be careful of him." These issues are explored through the medium of the stories, but actually the architecture of the book is such that there are many examples of women who are loyal, brave, devoted - especially to their lovers.

  Marina Warner

  Children, Husband, Book

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The other thing about the Nights is that it is quite racist. One parentheses is that I think this is one of the negative things that appeal to people, that The Arabian Nights could be used as a disguise for racism. It suited the West. You could smuggle racism into children's literature, you see. The African magician in the story of Aladdin, he's labeled explicitly as the "African Magician." He's not a character but a stereotype, and a lot of this got into nursery literature in this Oriental disguise.

  Marina Warner

  Children, Character, Night

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Any strong Muslim regime that threatens Israel, and we did. He said the Americans only want oil, and, of course, Iraq has the second-largest reserves. And he said that we will always replace God's law with manmade law. And finally that we intended to occupy and destroy Islamic sanctities. And I suspect that in our government, very few people knew that Iraq was the second-holiest place in Islam, after the Arabian Peninsula.

  Michael Scheuer

  Strong, Islamic, Government

  Source: www.pbs.org

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