Tariq Ali quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Tariq Ali

Tariq Ali Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Tariq Ali on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

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.

History rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away.

Even if you reject everything, it is always better to know what it is you are rejecting.

After flirting with neoisolationism, the U.S. is now deciding it wants to run the world.

Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.

It's a total failure of the Western imagination that the only enemy they can see is Adolph Hitler.

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.

Power can shape 'truth,' but not forever.

In my eyes, a patriot is little more than an international blackleg.

The heathen could only be eliminated as a force if their culture was completely erased.

The Lumiere brothers first exhibited moving pictures in Paris in 1896. A year later, there was a private showing at the Yildiz palace in Istanbul.

The United States is now The Empire. There isn't an empire; there's The Empire, and that empire is the United States.

For India, the links with the United States/Israel are the centrepiece of its foreign policy.

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

Revolutionaries are not infallible.

In the Seventies, we still had dreams and hopes of Utopia, but by the end of the decade, the world had shifted to the right.

As a political current, Maoism was always weak in Britain, confined largely to students from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

I think democracy is on the decline in the West. Ruling parties are the same: neo-liberalism at home and wars abroad.

I am, in general, favourable to activism and social movements and hostile to graft and corruption.

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

The past has too much knowledge embedded in it, and therefore it's best to forget it and start anew.

There was a good moment in Islam when people were actually challenging authority at every level. Very different from the world we live in.

The function of a bourgeois democracy is to secure the consent of the masses to their own exploitation and oppression.

During the Gulf War, journalists used to challenge government news managers and insisted they wouldn't just accept the official version of events.

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

Terrorism emanates from weakness, not strength. It is the sign of despair.

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

It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.

Desperation is the result of globalization.

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.

I am an atheist and do not know the meaning of the 'religious pain' that is felt by believers of every cast when what they believe in is insulted.

Independence is the only way Scotland can realise its full political and cultural potential in the 21st century.

History, when they do it, is ancient history, and they sensationalize even that. Contemporary history is virtually ignored on television.

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

Those who really value Ukrainian sovereignty should opt for real independence and a positive neutrality: neither a plaything of the West nor Moscow.

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

The origins of Indian classical music, not unlike their western counterparts, lie in the Vedas, the ancient Hindu scriptures of 2,000 years ago.

We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane.

I think the Americans fished out the same condom but found it had too many holes in it.

The sobbing of the weak today is the sobbing of the victims of neoliberal policies. They consist of billions of people all over the world.

Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan were self-proclaimed atheists.

The Pakistan Cricket Board is a long-standing joke, its chairmen replaced with every change of government.

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

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

The "coalition against terrorism" means the United States. It does not wish anyone else to interfere with its strategy.

The human voice deployed to recite the Vedas and later aid the temple dancers was paramount before any instruments emerged.