Top 43 Quotes & Sayings by Jalal Talabani

Military confrontation is not a suitable alternative in confronting terror and current security threats.

Iraq is not occupied, but there are foreign forces on its soil, which is different.

The Kurdish people welcome the no-fly zone protection, contrary to the Iraqi regime that is against it.

Rather, it is through conciliation and compromise that we are building a fair Iraq, a just state for all its peoples.

Conciliation is not capitulation, nor is compromise to be deemed equivalent to imbalanced concession.

Self-determination could mean independence, confederacy, federal and autonomy.

Every human must take responsibility for his actions.

I shall stand for freedom of thought and expression in a place where it has been trampled and penalized.

All I wanted was to be a university teacher.

Our gratitude to the American people is immense and we should never be embarrassed to express it.

A military coup needs a sacrifice and courage that you can't find in an army without morale.

This will be Iraq for all without discrimination among Iraqi citizens, or ethnic or sectarian discrimination.

Democracies, unlike dictatorships, are forgiving and generous, but they cannot survive unless they fight.

Our plan is to struggle against terrorism and have security for the country and help draft a democratic constitution as soon as possible.

The justice of our cause must be reflected in the manner in which we rectify the crimes of the past.

Wishful thinking is one thing, and reality another.

As president of Iraq, I shall strive to represent the diversity of a country that has too often in the past denied difference.

Justice for the major perpetrators cannot be separated from the vindication of the rights of the individual victim.

My door will always be open to those who genuinely renounce violence and seek peaceful accommodation into our nascent democracy.

We must provide all kinds of freedom, personal and economic, to all Iraqis. I will fight for that.

The Kurdish people have the right of self-determination like every other nation in the world.

We believe that an Iraqi founding national assembly, freely elected, must decide the future of Iraq.

I must tell you that I am committed, as the president of Iraq, to benchmarks and to do our best to achieve some progress forward for national reconciliation.

No for the return of Saddam's Baath party. This is against the constitution and those who are negotiating to bring them back are violating the constitution.

Iraq is not going to starve to death because of the absence of assistance from Arab countries.

To move any regime you need to have co-operation and co-ordination between Kurds, Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, the people and the army. Until we have this we cannot change the regime.

A greater international role is important to lift some of the burden from the shoulders of the United States.

We are trying to persuade all the Iraqi opposition to come breathe freedom in Iraq and use liberated Kurdistan as a base for our common struggle.

The Western governments will be encouraged and persuaded to deal with the real representatives and listen to the real voice of the Kurdish people.

I believe the democratic transformation in Iraq will lead to change in Middle East.

We need to make a distinction between misled Iraqis, those who believe that they are carrying weapons to liberate Iraq from what they call occupation, and criminal gangs that came from outside and wants to wage a deadly war on the Iraqi people, killing women and children in mosques and churches.

Human rights and individual liberties, including religious freedom, will be at the heart of the new Iraq.

It is the American air protection, which safeguards the freedom enjoyed by the Kurdish region. It guarantees the cultural, health and civilizational progress made in Iraqi Kurdistan.

I always tell the Kurds who defend independence: Let's say we declared the independent Kurdish state and Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey imposed sanctions on us, without waging a war. How would we survive under those circumstances?

I voted 'yes' and I urge all Iraqis, no matter their different ethnicities and religions ... to vote 'yes' to the constitution

Under extremely difficult circumstances (Iraq) pursues the inherently complicated task of rebuilding the country. Yet Iraq continues, courageously, to reach for the promise of a democratic, federal and pluralistic state, where generations of oppressed Iraqis will regain their dignity, freedom and the right to join the civilized and progressive nations of the world.

Trust is for lovers. In politics there are only converging interests.

It was an agreement between Saddam (Hussein) and the shah of Iran and not between Iraq and Iran.

We must acknowledge that for scores of years the Iraqis have offered martyrs and victims but have not been able to change the regime.

Talabani and Al-Maliki want to keep their seats for ever. Talabani forgets that the side which brought him to power was the United States and it brought him by rigging the elections.

There is a kind of sympathy with the Americans who are looked upon as liberators.

The brutal regime of the dictator fell, the regime that ruled Iraq for decades, the decades of darkness. The decades that were of tyranny.

We are not denying that Turkey has a right to defend itself from extremists but some of its actions are not serving any democratic purpose in Turkey or in Iraq. This will not benefit the relations between the two countries.