Quotes from Mohamed ElBaradei

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.

Sanctions are a bad idea.

Every country has the right to nuclear technology as long as they use it safely, peacefully and in a secure way.

People feel repressed by their own governments; they feel unfairly treated by the outside world; they wake up in the morning, and who do they see - they see people being shot and killed: all Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur.

I cannot bear the responsibility for one drop of blood.

Democracy is more than a ballot box.

You either have a civil society or you don't.

Challenging the integrity of the non-proliferation regime is a matter which can affect international peace and security.

Music gives me a lot of peace, either classic music with its structure or the spontaneity of Miles Davis. It brings the best in you.

You will not really have durable peace without a proper security structure in the Middle East.

Libya is a good example of a country that has come to a realization that weapons of mass destruction threaten more than assure, and I hope that will be followed by others.

In my view, stability only comes with a government that is elected by the people and works for the people.

Its up to any government to decide how to react to the denial of basic human rights anywhere in the world, including Egypt.

The international community must do a better job of controlling the risks of nuclear proliferation. Sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle - the production of new fuel, the processing of weapon-usable material, the disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste - would be less vulnerable to proliferation if brought under multinational control.

It is going to take a long time to switch Egypt into a democracy.

We still live in a world where if you have nuclear weapons, you are buying power; you are buying insurance against attack.

So, we need to delegitimize the nuclear weapon, and by de-legitimizing... meaning trying to develop a different system of security that does not depend on nuclear deterrence.

I think one country with nuclear weapons is one country too many.

Everybody has to chip in, I think, and see how we can have a functioning system of collective security where we do not continue to face the threat of countries trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction or particularly nuclear weapons.

Israel claims it needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against any threat to its existence. The Arab world in return feels that this is an imbalanced system; there is a sense of humiliation and impotence.

We continue to have nuclear weapons relied on as a weapon of choice. If that policy were to continue, we continue to have countries who are in a security bind, if you like, or perceive themselves to be in security bind to look for acquisition of nuclear weapons.

As long as some of us choose to rely on nuclear weapons, we continue to risk that these same weapons will become increasingly attractive to others.

I still believe that any country understands that if they use nuclear weapons, they will be wiped out of existence. They could be irrational in many ways, but I don't think they're irrational to the point that they're ready to annihilate their own country.

I feel relieved that we discovered that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons.