Bashar al Assad

America is interested in re-arranging the region as it sees fit.

Is there an equality of power between America and Iraq? Definitely not; however, the Iraqi people are standing fast and are defending their land courageously.

Israel ranks her priorities in the following way: security, land, and water.

I am Syrian, I was made in Syria, I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.

The most significant indicator that there is no disaster in Iraq is the fact that there is no exodus.

We believe that Lebanon has been the first real experience for all the Arabs.

In the Soviet army it takes more courage to retreat than advance.

Tell a thousand people to draft a letter, let them debate every phrase, and see how long it takes and what you get.

What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy.

More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life.

I don’t think Russia is setting this as a goal; I don’t think this should be Russia’s goal. I think even the United States doesn’t need to be a superpower. China doesn’t need to be a superpower. It’s a different world.

It is difficult to say which is more menacing. But both of [points of war danger -Japan and Germany] exist and both are smoldering. In comparison with these two principal focal points of the war danger, the Italo-Ethiopian war represents an episode.

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

A figure who receives money from abroad for his political work, and thus serves some foreign interest, cannot be a politician in Russia.

We get the leaders we vote for. We get the policies we vote for. And when we don’t vote, that’s when we wind up with government of, by and for other people.

The system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another

The Presbyterian Church took a very strong stand on a boycott on the divestment – there are no sanctions…they did it the way it’s effective. They concentrated on the occupied territories and on U.S. multinationals participating in the occupied territories.

I was in Moscow recently and I spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer, and we had a tremendous success.

..people would like to think there’s somebody up there who knows what he’s doing. Since we don’t participate, we don’t control and we don’t even think about the questions of crucial importance, we hope somebody is paying attention who has some competence. Let’s hope the ship has a captain, in other words, since we’re not taking in deciding what’s going on. I think that’s a factor. But also, it is an important feature of the ideological system to impose on people the feeling that they are incompetent to deal with these complex and important issues; they’d better leave it to the captain. One device is to develop a star system, an array of figures who are often media creations or creations of the academic propaganda establishment, whose deep insights we are supposed to admire and to whom we must happily and confidently assign the right to control our lives and control international affairs.

Once wide coercive powers are given to government agencies…such powers cannot be effectively controlled.