Quotes from Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

Let me tell you quite bluntly that this king business has given me personally nothing but headaches.

How can you hope to build up a nation by fragmenting its politics into opposing camps? Whatever one group builds, the other will endeavour to destroy.

To be first in the Middle East is not enough. We must raise ourselves to the level of a great world power.

Thank God we in Iran have neither the desire nor the need to suffer from democracy.

The great powers claim that whatever they possess is theirs by right, but whatever we, the smaller countries possess is negotiable.

My main mistake was to have made an ancient people advance by forced marches toward independence, health, culture, affluence, comfort.

Nixon is a strong leader with a good grasp of the world's problems. He knows that the only way to argue with the communists is from a position of strength.

My advisers built a wall between myself and my people. I didn't realize what was happening. When I woke up, I had lost my people.

I want the standard of living in Iran in ten years' time to be exactly on a level with that in Europe today. In twenty years' time we shall be ahead of the United States.

Shah is a kind of magic word with the Persian people.

Nobody can influence me, nobody. Still less a woman. Women are important in a man's life only if they're beautiful and charming and keep their femininity.

Let me tell you quite bluntly that this king business has given me personally nothing but headaches.

My advisers built a wall between myself and my people. I didn't realize what was happening. When I woke up, I had lost my people.

My main mistake was to have made an ancient people advance by forced marches toward independence, health, culture, affluence, comfort.

Shah is a kind of magic word with the Persian people.