Bashar al Assad

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.

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

The problem with the West is that they start with political reform going towards democracy. If you want to go towards democracy, the first thing is to involve the people in decision making, not to make it.

When Lebanon started its resistance it was a small and divided country.

I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country.

The U.S. and Britain are incapable of controlling all of Iraq.

Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, ‘What kind of peace?’

Libya is divided into tribes and clans.

You’re thinking of Eurpoe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe.

Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I as the elected President of Russia give you the order to turn your tanks and not to fight against your own people.

The line of ‘Make America great again,’ the phrase, that was mine, I came up with it about a year ago, and I kept using it, and everybody’s using it, they are all loving it. I don’t know, I guess I should copyright it, maybe I have copyrighted it.

Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.

Half of Republicans deny that global warming is taking place, while 70% say that whether it is or not, humans are not responsible. Such figures would be shocking anywhere, but are remarkably so in a developed country with unparalleled resources and easy access to information.

Hamas is regularly described as ‘Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.’ One will be hard put to find something like ‘democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus’-blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.

I’m eternally grateful to fate and the citizens of Russia that they’ve trusted me to be the head of the Russian government.

Equality of the general rules of law and conduct…is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty and the only equality which we can secure without destroying liberty.

Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

The whole world recognizes Russia’s cultural achievements. It is impossible to imagine the world culture without Russian culture, without our music and literature.

Stalinism is linked with a cult of personality and massive violations of the law, with repression and camps. There is nothing like that in Russia and, I hope, will never again be.

In France, to break the powerful labor movement, the US occupying forces needed strikebreakers and, more generally, goons. They reconstituted the Corsican Mafia for that purpose and, in payment, allowed them to restore the old heroin connection based in Marseilles…