Tariq Ali > Quotes

“It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.”
― Tariq Ali, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad

“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.”
― Tariq Ali

“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.”
― Tariq Ali, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad

“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.”
― Tariq Ali, The Stone Woman

“Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.”
― Tariq Ali, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad

“و البشر منقسمون إلى فئتين لا ثالث لهما. أوغاد مستنيرون، أو حمقى متدينون”
― Tariq Ali, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

“في كل أربع وعشرون ساعة هناك دائماً ساعة يملؤها الغم و الرثاء للنفس، و الارتباك و الرغبة في رؤية وجوه أخرى، و لكنها مجرد ساعة لا تلبث أن تمر”
― Tariq Ali, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

“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.”
― Tariq Ali, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad

“[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.”
― Tariq Ali

“الأمريكيون لايحبون أن تحكم أنظمة ديمقراطية بلدانًا منتجة للنفط، لأن ذلك سيشكل مجازفة دائمة لهم”
― Tariq Ali, Speaking of Empire and Resistance: Conversations with Tariq Ali

“في أزمنة الجهالة، على المرء ان يتعلم فن الجهالة”
― Tariq Ali, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

“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.”
― Tariq Ali, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad

“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.”
― Tariq Ali, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

“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.”
― Tariq Ali, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

“الخيارات بسيطة وواضحة. أن نتحول أو أن نقتل، أو أن نموت وسيوفنا في أيدينا”
― Tariq Ali, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

“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.”
― Tariq Ali

“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.”
― Tariq Ali, The Book of Saladin: A Novel

“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”
― Tariq Ali, The Islam Quintet: Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, The Book of Saladin, The Stone Woman, A Sultan in Palermo, and Night of the Golden Butterfly

“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.”
― Tariq Ali, The Book of Saladin

“The heathen could only be eliminated as a force if their culture was completely erased.”
― Tariq Ali, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

“Happiness is like good health. You only miss it when it disappears.”
― Tariq Ali, The Book of Saladin

“ان القانون الدولي لايُطبّق الا حين تريد ذلك الدولة العظمى والأقوى في العالم "الولايات المتحدة”
― Tariq Ali, Speaking of Empire and Resistance: Conversations with Tariq Ali

“The Executive Committee of the People's Will had scored it's biggest success on 1 March 1881 by assassinating Alexander II, but also its biggest failure. (...) The aim of terror was to rouse the people from their torpor and trigger a mass uprising based on previous models (Razin/Pugatchev), but this time under new conditions and in order to completely destroy the autocracy and its institutions. It never worked out and, in a grumpy mood, Lenin once characterised terrorists as liberals with bombs, suggesting that both held the opinion that propaganda alone, of deed or word, would be sufficient for the task that lay ahead. For the most part terrorist acts scared people and legitimised government repression.”
― Tariq Ali, The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution

“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.”
― Tariq Ali, The Stone Woman

“Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan were self-proclaimed atheists.”
― Tariq Ali, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity

“Ono što oni nisu shvatili jeste da se bolesti duše ne liječe na isti način kao bolesti tijela.”
― Tariq Ali

“Youssef El-Ginghly, a Tower Hamlets GP, writing in the Observer in March 2013, described how the NHS is being dismantled and concluded: This is what saddens me: what were once the NHS’s strengths – resources, expertise and the united focus on the patient – are being replaced by a fragmented and atomized service, bound not by a duty of care but by a contract and driven, not by what is best for the patient, but by the cost of the encounter. It will be a slow, insidious creep but it’s coming. Be prepared. This is the way the NHS ends: not with a bang but a whimper.”
― Tariq Ali, The Extreme Centre: A Second Warning

“Tonight they had been presented with a heavily spiced and scented barbecue lamb; rabbits stewed in fermented grape-juice with red peppers and whole cloves of garlic; meat-balls stuffed with brown truffles which literally melted in the mouth; a harder variety of meat-balls fried in coriander oil and served with triangular pieces of chilli-paste fried in the same oil; a large container full of bones floating in a saffron-coloured sauce; a large dish of fried rice; miniature vol-au-vents and three different salads; asparagus, a mixture of thinly sliced onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, sprinkled with herbs and the juice of fresh lemons, chick-peas soaked in yoghurt and sprinkled with pepper.”
― Tariq Ali, The Islam Quintet: Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, The Book of Saladin, The Stone Woman, A Sultan in Palermo, and Night of the Golden Butterfly

“La falsedad ha corrompido tanto al mundo que las sectas discuten sus destinos en el campo de batalla. Pero si el odio no fuera l elemento natural del hombre, iglesias y mezquitas se alzarían unas junto a otras - Abul Ala' Al-Ma'rri”
― Tariq Ali, A la sombra del granado (13/20)

“Kad mi guja izjavi ljubav, ja je objesim oko vrata.”
― Tariq Ali, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree