These Arab Spring quotes will inspire you. Arab Spring, a series of anti-government uprisings affecting Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East beginning in 2010.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging Arab Spring quotes, Arab Spring sayings, and Arab Spring proverbs.
Best Arab Spring Quotes
- “I think some of this fascination with the ‘Arab Spring’ is just a grand experiment with Israel’s survival.” ~ John Bolton
- “Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality.” ~ Eric Alterman
- “In any conflict area, it is always the women who are the first point of attack. But I think the more they have seen of oppression and violence, they have gotten more brave, more strong, more fearless than they were. You see this refusal to just keep quiet and do as you are told.” ~ Fatima Bhutto
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“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Revolution is like a love story. When you are in love, you become a much better person. And when you are in revolution, you become a much better person.” ~ Alaa Al Aswany
- “The riveting moral power of the Arab Spring comes from its homegrown quality. This is about Arabs overcoming fear to become agents of their own transformation and liberation.” ~ Roger Cohen
- “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.” ~ Abdallah II
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“Social media allows people to connect. So instead of reading about the Arab Spring, I can have students following along, in real-time, with what is happening.” ~ Steven Anderson
- “The international community cannot stand by and watch the massacre of Libyan protesters. In Rwanda we watched. In Kosovo we acted.” ~ Anne-Marie Slaughter
- “It is the growing periphery of the Arab world – the masses at its margins, not its feeble and decaying center – that is shaping the future of the region.” ~ Wadah Khanfar
- “The Arab spring reminds me a bit of the decolonisation process where one country gets independence and everybody else wants it. How about us, when do we get it, when do we make our move? And you have a situation where someone has been in power for decades, where the integrity of elections, democracy and security have really not been debated or discussed and most people suspect that elections are rigged and that the democratic rotation that elections are supposed to ensure doesn’t really happen. And when this goes on for a while you are sitting on a powder keg.” ~ Kofi Annan
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“Democracy or breakdown in Syria would change the whole Middle East overnight.” ~ Paul Krugman
- “I believe democracy will succeed in Tunisia, but I also believe that it will succeed in the other Arab Spring countries.” ~ Rashid al-Ghannushi
- “I think that the drama of people rising up demanding their own freedom is one that resonates very deeply with America. I think that President Barack Obama has tried and would like to find a way to relate to the Arab Spring, but I think he also wants to be, rightly, very careful that we don’t take it over. It is very important that they own this. He is trying to influence it this way but without, “We’re so never going to go to the extreme of Iraq and putting boots on the ground again.”” ~ Thomas Friedman
- “From the streets of Cairo and the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, from the busy political calendar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, social media was not only sharing the news but driving it.” ~ Dan Rather
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“There are an awful lot of things going on that need understanding and explanation, but – to put it mildly – the world is a mess.” ~ Madeleine Albright
- “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.” ~ Abdallah II
- “There are going to be a lot of questions, not just in my country, but across the Middle East. Is Israel going to continue to be “Fortress Israel”? Or, as we all hope, become accepted into the neighborhood, which I believe is the only way we can move forward in harmony. And 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.” ~ Abdallah II
- “If you look not just at the Arab spring, but at what I call the youth spring that has started in Europe, young people are starting to find a voice, and they are not looking to the traditional media to reflect that.” ~ Shane Smith
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“I think the Internet and technology in general has changed everything. We can see it overseas even more with the Arab Spring and so forth.” ~ Jane Fonda
- “No one will remember that President Obama supported the Arab Spring if it eventually fails and the region collapses back into the political Dark Ages. If we actively engage these movements with advice, with money, and, when necessary, with military force, then we get a vote in how it all turns out.” ~ Sebastian Junger
- “I’m optimistic, though. Now, with the Arab Spring, I think that people in the region are beginning to overturn some of these clichés, and Western editors are starting to catch up. We’re seeing some exceptions to the stereotypes, like Elizabeth Rubin’s great piecein Newsweek, “The Feminists in the Middle of Tahrir Square.” But an article like that shouldn’t be the exception. It should be the rule.” ~ Annia Ciezadlo
- “There is always the risk that a conflagration in the Middle East becomes larger and more dangerous. In this scenario, we discover that the Arab Spring was merely the prelude to a deeper and much farther-reaching upheaval in the region that has greater impact on countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.” ~ Ian Bremmer
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“The problem with what we call the ‘Arab spring’ is that these are very nationalistic experiences. Tunisians are concerned with Tunisia, Egyptians concerned with Egypt and so on.” ~ Tariq Ramadan
- “Time and again-from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the events of 9/11 to the onset of the Arab Spring-events have caught the experts, whether in government or on the outside, completely by surprise. Business owners with comparable performance records go bust. Brokers lose their clients. Physicians get sued for malpractice. Yet think-tankers and policy wonks continue to opine, never pausing to reflect on-or apologize for-their spotty records.” ~ Andrew Bacevich
- “In Egypt the neoliberal programs have meant statistical growth, like right before the Arab Spring, Egypt was a kind of poster child for the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund:] the marvelous economic management and great reform. The only problem was for most of the population it was a kind of like a blow in the solar plexus: wages going down, benefits being eliminated, subsidized food gone and meanwhile, high concentration of wealth and a huge amount of corruption.” ~ Noam Chomsky
- “I am a supporter of much of the Arab Spring, as a matter of indigenous self-determination. So, I see the United States’ role in Libya as an appropriately restrained one in providing some international support for the work of those trying to bring democratic change against a regime that has undoubtedly been dictatorial, particularly in the past twenty years.” ~ Melissa Harris-Perry
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“The Arab Spring has heightened the ideological tension between Ankara and Tehran, and Turkey’s model seems to be winning.” ~ Mustafa Akyol
- “Some socialist movements in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain, for instance, were genuine. I was making films about the so-called Arab Spring, and I’m well aware of how complex the situation really was. But it goes without saying is that the West immediately infiltrated and ‘derailed’ the revolutions, turning them into what you have described.” ~ Andre Vltchek
- “I can understand the idea that there is a conspiracy. In fact, in much of the world there is a sense of an ultra-powerful CIA manipulating everything that happens, such as running the Arab Spring, running the Pakistani Taliban, etc. That is just nonsense. They [CIA] created a monster and now they are appalled by it.” ~ Noam Chomsky
- “The first question that I ask : do I have public support or not. That is the first question that I asked as President. If I don’t have the public support, whether there’s the so-called “Arab spring” – it’s not spring, anyway – but whether we have this or we don’t, if you don’t have public support, you have to quit, you have to leave. If you have public support, in any circumstances you have to stay. That’s your mission, you have to help the people, you have to serve the people.” ~ Bashar al-Assad
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“The most striking thing is that even before Osama bin Laden was killed, he seemed largely irrelevant to the Arab Spring.” ~ Paul Wolfowitz
- “Syria is a civil war. Syria began as a popular uprising, just like the other experiences in the Arab Spring, with a repressive government that responded by basically killing the protesters. It’s not a genocide, it’s a war, and there’s a difference. Genocide is a preplanned attack on people because of who they are. This is a interstate conflict.” ~ Susan Rice
- “Let’s look at two things real quickly: the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the Sixties and the Arab Spring starting in Tunisia and Cairo. What they had in common was people who were told, and who believed inside themselves, that they were a certain way, and the society at large believed it.” ~ Bill Ayers
- “I don’t think the Arab Spring had much to do with energy. I think it was just the opposite, in fact. I think the Arab Spring happened because particularly young people knew they were living in a context where they could not realize their full potential, that they are being kept down by their own governments.” ~ Thomas Friedman
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Oppressors must be the most insecure people in the world.” ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
- “Independence used to be the ticket for liberty. But today, security and freedom, whether it’s in the Arab Spring, whether it’s in Iraq or whether it’s right here in the United States, means working cooperatively and interdependently with others.” ~ Benjamin Barber
- “All the big revolutions, whether it’s the Industrial Revolution, the Arab Spring, those changes happened by economic and social shifts brought about by the people’s voices, and those things weren’t voted for. Most of our changes today are brought about through technology, not by voting.” ~ Lupe Fiasco
- “Israel no longer has allies in Egypt and in Tunisia, we are saying to the Zionist enemies that times have changed and that the time of the Arab Spring, the time of the revolution, of dignity and of pride has arrived.” ~ Ismail Haniyeh
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“You’re advised not to drink the replica Arab spring water.” ~ Banksy
- “You can understand Tunisia revolution as a failure to censor the internet. And Libya had that failure too. It’s very difficult for governments that are autocratic and don’t have broad popular support to be in power when a lot of people have these devices. That was what Arab Spring was about, that people could express this and lead to revolution.” ~ Eric Schmidt
- “Ultimately, only diplomacy can bring about a durable solution to the challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear program. As President and Commander in Chief, I will do what is necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. However, I have a profound responsibility to try to resolve our differences peacefully, rather than rush towards conflict.” ~ Barack Obama
- “Congress needs to send a strong signal that direct communication with the leader of the free world is a privilege, particularly for a regime that has been as hostile as Iran has been towards America for more than three decades. President Rouhani needs to take these two simple steps to demonstrate good faith before any further discussions.” ~ Ted Cruz
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“Odd how often blood is shed to obtain freedom from those in power. Oppressors must be the most insecure people in the world.” ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
- “If democracy succeeds in Egypt, other countries will follow. Should the democratic experiment in Egypt be hijacked by the military or anti-democratic Islamist groups, the revolution will fail elsewhere.” ~ David Ignatius
- “Look at what has occurred in history. When the Berlin Wall fell, it was not surprising, but it was unexpected. Who predicted the Arab Spring? Nobody expected it, but all the ingredients were there. I think all the ingredients are also there for Quebec to become a country. But when? That’s another question.” ~ Gilles Duceppe
- “We tie ourselves in knots when we act as if democracy is good for the United States and Israel but not for the Arab world. For far too long, we’ve treated the Arab world as just an oil field.” ~ Nicholas D. Kristof
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“The well of public opinion has been well and truly poisoned by the Iraq episode.” ~ David Cameron
- “With the Arab Spring, came a great deal of hope that there would be a change towards more moderation, and opportunity for greater participation on the part of women in public life, and in economic life in the Middle East. But instead, we’ve seen in nation after nation, a number of disturbing events.” ~ Mitt Romney
- “I think Martin Luther King would always keep track of collective insurgencies among poor and working people. He was concerned about the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union, for example. He would have closely followed the Arab Spring. And certainly he would be very critical of the massive surveillance state that has emerged in America in the last five to 10 years. He would have approved of the movements trying to gain some accountability in U.S. foreign policy, such as drones being (used) on innocent people. I think he would march against drones.” ~ Cornel West
- “The end of despots is always odd?exhilarating to those who suffered their tyrannies, and to those who hold despotism in contempt, and anti-climatic at the same time, the discovery that these tyrants were petty, frightened men after all.” ~ Fouad Ajami
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“I salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.” ~ Ismail Haniyeh
- “But for us, in Syria, we have principles. We’ll do anything to prevent the region from another crazy war. It’s not only Syria. Because it will start in Syria.” ~ Bashar al-Assad
- “What is irreversible in the Arab world is this intellectual revolution, the awakening that we can get rid of dictators. That is here, and the people have this sentiment and this political power. They feel that they can do it, and it’s still there. At the same time, we don’t know what is going to happen. So to be very quick by saying, “Oh, revolutions and Arab Spring,” and – you know, what I’m advocating is to take a cautious optimism as the starting point of our analysis and to look at what is happening.” ~ Tariq Ramadan
