Quotes from Tariq Ali

Od razbacanog kamenja nikad se ne mogu sagraditi ?vrste gradske zidine.

It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.

If every single Jew born anywhere in the world has the right to become an Israeli citizen, then all the Palestinians who were chucked out of Palestine by the Zionist Government should have the same right, very simple.

This is the permanent tension that lies at the heart of a capitalist democracy and is exacerbated in times of crisis. In order to ensure the survival of the richest, it is democracy that has to be heavily regulated rather than capitalism.

How we live our lives does not,unfortunately depend on us alone.Circumstances,good or bad,constantly intervene.A person close to us die.A person not so close to us carries on living.All these things affect how we live.

Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.

That natural disasters are required to provide Americans with a glimpse of reality in their own country is an indication of the deep rot infecting the official political culture.

Taken from a BBC documentary ] Tariq was born in Lahore, now in Pakistan, then part of British-ruled India, in 1943. A Catholic school education did nothing to shake his life-long atheism, which he shared with his communist parents.

In every twenty-four hours there is always one which is full of anguish and self-pity and confusion and the desire to see other faces, but an hour passes quickly enough.

Monotonous talk of the end of American hegemony, the universal cliché of the period, is mostly a way of avoiding mounting a serious opposition to it.

To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence.

I understand you only too well, but Rachel's needs are no less important than your desire to be part of history. Find a balance. Happiness is like good health. You only miss it when it disappears.

Oh my son," sighed Ama. "I was talking to the shadows of the pomegranate trees. At least they will be here when we are all gone.

THERE CAN BE FEW delights in the world as pleasant as a Siracusan spring. The fragrance of the lemon, orange, apricot, almond and peach blossoms pervade the city, enriched by the moist, salty sea breezes. On

The service of great kings may carry its own rewards, but the service of truth goes unrewarded and is, for that very reason, worth far more.

Happiness is like good health. You only miss it when it disappears.

The heathen could only be eliminated as a force if their culture was completely erased.

Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan were self-proclaimed atheists.

Ono što oni nisu shvatili jeste da se bolesti duše ne lije?e na isti na?in kao bolesti tijela.

Galileo held the truths he had discovered to be of very great significance, but as soon as they endangered his life he recanted with the greatest of ease. He felt that whether the earth or the sun revolved around each other was not worth his life. He may also have felt that it was more important for him to live and work so that his students could spread the truth.

To je uradila uvjerena da njen život nije toliko zanimljiv nikom osim njoj samoj, a njoj je ionako valjalo mrijeti. Nije pomislila da je brisanjem onoga što je smatrala okamenjenim uspomenama iz svoje li?ne povijesti, ona osudila tu jedinstvenu hroniku cijelog jednog života na zaborav koji sobom nosi nadolaze?a buktinja.

Now hardly anything seemed to matter except politics—the latest series of atrocities, which family had converted, who had offered money to bribe the Church, and, of course, the fateful night which was burned in their collective memory and which caused even those who had previously expressed a total indifference to politics to sit up and take stock.

An act of unilateral nuclear disarmament by a European power would have a much more lasting impact than all the sanctions under consideration. Sanctions, as we know from the example of Iraq, always affect the least powerful citizens the most.

The patchwork political landscape of the Arab world - the client monarchies, degenerated nationalist dictatorships, and the imperial petrol stations known as the Gulf states - was the outcome of an intensive experience of Anglo-French colonialism.