Tariq Ali Quotes

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Tariq Ali

Profession : Historian

Birth : October 21, 1943

The patchwork political landscape of the Arab world - the client monarchies, degenerated nationalist dictatorships, and the imperial petrol stations known as the Gulf states - was the outcome of an intensive experience of Anglo-French colonialism.

Tariq Ali

In times of crisis, the incumbent suffers. And the bigger the crisis, the greater the punishment inflicted on those in power unless they do something that makes a change.

Tariq Ali

To dissociate politicians from capitalists is slightly disingenuous, to put it mildly. U.S. lawmakers are competitive and auction themselves to the highest bidder via the lobby system.

Tariq Ali

As a candidate, Obama projected himself as a new Reagan, above narrow party politics. He wanted to please all but has ended up annoying many.

Tariq Ali

Western enthusiasm for democracy stops when those opposed to its policies are elected to office.

Tariq Ali

A storm swept the world in 1968. It started in Vietnam, then blew across Asia, crossing the sea and the mountains to Europe and beyond. A brutal war waged by the U.S. against a poor southeast Asian country was seen every night on television.

Tariq Ali

We were constantly appealing for funds from readers when I edited 'The Black Dwarf' in 1968-69.

Tariq Ali

In some ways, the '60s were a reaction to the '50s and the intensity of the Cold War.

Tariq Ali

Anthony Powell was the most European of 20th-century British novelists.

Tariq Ali

The genealogy of fictional characters can become an obsession, like train-spotting, and should be firmly resisted.

Tariq Ali

In January 1961, the United States severed diplomatic relations in response to Cuban nationalisation of U.S.-owned sugar plantations, banks and businesses.

Tariq Ali

In 1962, President Kennedy expanded an earlier trade embargo put in place by a predecessor, President Eisenhower, to a total economic blockade, which pushed the Cubans further in Moscow's direction.

Tariq Ali

Socially, the Cuban revolution created an education system and health service that remain the envy of much of the neo-liberal world.

Tariq Ali

I am not insulted by billions of Christians, Muslims and Jews believing there is a God and praying to this nonexistent deity on a regular basis.

Tariq Ali

It is as difficult to define or classify Islamic cinema as it would be a Christian, Jewish or Buddhist one.

Tariq Ali

The cinematic language and interior destiny of each Iranian film-maker is different. The international influences on them vary from Rossellini to Fellini, Akira Kurosawa to Hou Hsiao-hsien, but there is a strong sense of solidarity.

Tariq Ali

Exploiters and manipulators have always used religion self-righteously to further their own selfish ends.

Tariq Ali

There are, of course, deeply sincere people of religion in different parts of the world who genuinely fight on the side of the poor, but they are usually in conflict with organised religion themselves.

Tariq Ali

I do not accept the right of big powers to change governments as and when it affects their interests.

Tariq Ali

The Enlightenment attacked religion - Christianity, mainly - for two reasons: that it was a set of ideological delusions, and that it was a system of institutional oppression, with immense powers of persecution and intolerance.

Tariq Ali