The trouble with righting some wrongs is that it makes the remaining ones seem even more unbearable.
A. A. Gill
I think about the Arabs not as enemies but as cousins. Even when we are in a fierce conflict with them, they are more of a kind of family - with all the problems of a family. We have to live with them.
A. B. Yehoshua
I was proud my father spoke Arabic fluently - his father sent him to learn Arabic from a sheikh - and we had Arab friends. His task of understanding the Arabs - not only politics but poetry - was very important; he took it as a vocation.
We're living with the Arabs; we have to understand them... Through knowing the Arabs, you know yourself better.
I am not sure how much good is done by moralising about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle - telling children that virtue will be rewarded, when in fact it is mostly simply the fact of being the central character that ensures a favourable outcome. Fairy tales are not, on the whole, parables.
A. S. Byatt
Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.
Abba Eban
The Arab World is writing a new future; the pen is in our own hands.
Abdullah II of Jordan
We want to be, I think, an example for the rest of the Arab world, because there are a lot of people who say that the only democracy you can have in the Middle East is the Muslim Brotherhood.
Jordan has to show the Arab world that there's another way of doing things. We're a monarchy, yes, but if we can show democracy that leads to a two-, three-, four-party system - left, right and center - in a couple of years' time, then the Muslim Brotherhood will no longer be something to contend with.
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.
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.
I think this is really a defining moment for the Arab world. The problem is, it is all going to be about blood, sweat and tears. In certain countries it may be just sweat, and in some countries sweat and tears, and in some countries, as you can see, a lot of blood. I think initial instability is something that we are all extremely nervous of.
Many occasions I've sat down with Israelis to say, where do you see your country in 10 years time, and work me back, so we can figure out the synergies and the connections between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. No Israeli has ever been able to answer that question.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, like other countries in the region, rejects the acquisition of nuclear weapons by anyone, especially nuclear weapons in the Middle East region. We hope that such weapons will be banned or eliminated from the region by every country in the region.
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
To allow the construction of places of worship other than Islamic ones in Saudi Arabia, it would be like asking the Vatican to build a mosque inside of it.
It is true that a large percentage of the Western world hopes that I am imprisoned or dead. But all my people, the Palestinians and the Arabs, wish me long life and freedom.
Abu Abbas
Arab leaders worry more about making money from the profits they get from oil and gas that they turn the other way when Lebanon is being destroyed right next to them. Their neighbours are being murdered, but they only make calculations for their own benefit.
Abu Bakar Bashir
The corporate right fires up the religious right against gay marriage and abortion and uses their votes to push their deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. It's an old trick. The House of Saud has the same arrangement with the Mullahs in Saudi Arabia.
Adam McKay
Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can be elected to the parliament in a democratic election.
Adam Michnik
And of all illumination which human reason can give, none is comparable to the discovery of what we are, our nature, our obligations, what happiness we are capable of, and what are the means of attaining it.
Adam Weishaupt
The piano and the singing are two equal things to me - maybe not inseparable but very connected. You can say they are like two equal voices.
I am a Muslim Arab, in my actions oriented very to the left, in my convictions.
A femtosecond is comparable to one second in 32 million years. It is like watching a 32-million-year movie to see one second.
As someone from, and directly involved with, this part of the world, I am convinced Arabs are qualified to regain their glorious past.
The so-called Arab Spring has proved that the fall of a Mubarak-like presidency does not mean the immediate rise of democracy. In spite of this, I am confident that Egypt will not return to an authoritarian governing system again, and that, with some time, it will achieve its democratic goals.
An ordinary Turk, an ordinary Arab, an ordinary Tunisian can change history. We believe that democracy is good, and that our people deserve it.
You know, in Saudi Arabia, there is a body of 40 people - 34 people exactly, that once the succession comes, they will meet and they will elect a king in there.
I'm telling you, you can't compare Saudi Arabia to other countries.
You know, Saudi Arabia has a lot of poverty also. Regardless about what you hear about the viceroy and people being rich, et cetera.
The issue of Palestine has been there since more than 60 years. But more important since 1967 when the war was, ended in the defeat of some Arab countries.
Saudi Arabia has stability. The social contract and the political contract between the king and the rulers and the royal family and the ruled people in Saudi Arabia is very strong and the bondage is so solid.
Actually, King Abdullah, under his supervision and guidance, has established a dialogue in Saudi Arabia whereby all the population, whether Shiite or Sunnis from north, south, west or east, they can get together and exchange their views.
Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, where the population growth is very high, whereby you don't have the mortgage low yet. Still the demand outstrips supply by much.
Well, it's very clear that the Arab population is rising because they'd like to have a say in the running of their affairs, running of their government, and this is very legitimate.
My own center, my Kingdom Center, which is the highest priced tower in Saudi Arabia, was vacated twice because of terrorist attacks, terrorist threats.
The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.
One of the causes of the Arab Spring was high unemployment.
I would like to stress this point undoubtedly: France sees the Arab Spring as auspicious. The Arab Spring holds out tremendous hope - hope for democracy and the rule of law, hope for peace and stability, hope for better future in which every person can pursue goals commensurate with his or her needs, talents and ambitions.
An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense... that gold and economic freedom are inseparable.
How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.
Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.
I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.
I can be unbearable sometimes asking for so many takes.
I can't imagine David Lean justifying why he went to the desert to shoot 'Lawrence of Arabia.'
The Arabs have a God, the Jews have another, and the Catholics have another! And they're all fighting to maintain that they worship the one real God. Idiots!
Over the years, I've spent time in Saudi Arabia, the Bekaa Valley, Afghanistan, Jordan, and Kenya, among other vacation hotspots.
I think Maje typifies that French vibe where it's simple items that are very practical, very wearable but also, like, incredibly chic and expensive-looking.
Americans want to democratise us. OK, but why not go and democratise Saudi Arabia. Are we anything like Saudi Arabia? No, we are far from that. So why aren't they democratising Saudi Arabia? Because they are bastards, but they are their bastards.
The future of Arab films is absolutely up to Arabs and no one else. They've got the equipment, they've got the will, they've got the talent, now they just need a little bit of history behind them and a bit of cultural relaxation.
