Top 142 Quotes & Sayings by Mohamed ElBaradei - Page 2

We have lived for thousands of years together, Muslims and Christians; we are part of the same society.

Whether weapons exist in Iraq, Saddam Hussein or post-Saddam Hussein, it is a serious enough issue that require that we continue to go and make sure that Iraq does not have weapons.

Israel claims it needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against any threat to its existence. The Arab world in return feels that this is an imbalanced system; there is a sense of humiliation and impotence.

Barack Obama has injected fresh momentum into efforts - stalled for a decade - to bring about nuclear disarmament.

I'm not a grassroots organizer; that is clear. I believe in a division of labor. I'm not trained to organize the grassroots, and grassroots has to come from the grassroots.

You in the West have been sold the idea that the only options in the Arab world are between authoritarian regimes and Islamic jihadists. That's obviously bogus.

You will not really have durable peace without a proper security structure in the Middle East.

You're shooting yourself in the foot if you isolate or disempower the moderates.

Iran has the technology to produce the highly enriched uranium, which is not automatically meaning nuclear weapon.

My sister-in-law works for a group that supports orphanages in Cairo. She and her colleagues take care of children left behind by circumstances beyond their control. They feed these children, clothe them, and teach them to read.

I'm not a good small talker. I'm not into small talk, frankly.

Music gives me a lot of peace, either classic music with its structure or the spontaneity of Miles Davis. It brings the best in you.

I grew up in a conservative household. That was the life of the time in Egypt: a conservative, middle-class household.

There is no religion that was founded on intolerance - and no religion that does not value the sanctity of human life.

Your economic and social development is linked to the kind of regime you have.

It would be, in fact, very ominous if Iraq were to be able to get weapon-usable material, hydro-plutonium or highly enriched uranium from abroad.

Young Egyptians, gazing through the windows of the Internet, have gained a keener sense than many of their elders of the freedoms and opportunities they lack. They have found in social media a way to interact and share ideas, bypassing, in virtual space, the restrictions placed on physical freedom of assembly.

Nobody wants any country to have nuclear weapons.

Egypt needs to catch up with the rest of the world. We need to be free, democratic, and - society where people have the right to live in freedom and dignity.

Managing a country is like managing a company in many ways. It maybe involves more complicated issues, but it's the same skills.

I guess law was always interesting to me because you deal with constants. I like to deal with constants, abstracts, constants and reason and ration, rational approaches to things. I don't know, I never really thought why I wanted to study law. But if you ask me whether I would do it again, absolutely.

The U.S. engages with North Korea, so I don't see why they can't engage with Iran.

Once in a while, I have to pinch myself to remind myself I am Nobel laureate, but that is not part of my work plan every day.

Every country has the right to nuclear technology as long as they use it safely, peacefully and in a secure way.

The dream of democracy has long been enshrined in the hearts of the Egyptian people. It only needed awakening.

In a democracy, when you get 20 million people in the street, you resign.

Libya is a good example of a country that has come to a realization that weapons of mass destruction threaten more than assure, and I hope that will be followed by others.

I have a lot of interests in global issues, as you know, humanity, inequity, arms control, and I continue to be active on all these issues.

I think the Egyptian people need to restore confidence that Americans, the U.S., means what they say when they talk about democracy, rule of law.

I argue that for every country to have an independent fuel cycle is the wrong way to go. Because any country which has a complete fuel cycle is a latent nuclear weapons country, in the sense that it is not far from making a nuclear weapon.

I have, as you know, the utmost respect for President Obama as a person.

If we are addressing the issue of weapons of mass destruction, we need to send a uniform, consistent message that there is zero tolerance to any country who is developing weapons of mass destruction, North Korea included.

I feel relieved that we discovered that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons.

Everyone in the Middle East pretty much wants to come and be an American citizen, but pretty much everybody is angry with the U. S. foreign policy.

As much as we Egyptians treasure our military, acting alone it cannot provide the legitimacy to lay the foundations for democracy.

Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons.

You need to form a grand coalition, and you need to put your ideological differences aside and work together to focus on people's basic needs. You can't eat sharia.

Historically, Islam was hijacked about 20 or 30 years after the Prophet and interpreted in such a way that the ruler has absolute power and is accountable only to God. That, of course, was a very convenient interpretation for whoever was the ruler.

Threat is in the eye of the beholder.

You can't, in the 21st century, continue to live in a system where people live under martial law for 30 years.

If a country is suspected of going nuclear, you need to understand why. Why does it feel insecure?

The U.S. is not the holder of truth.

I lose my temper at home. I try to control my temper at work. Sometimes, if you are under a lot of pressure, you let off some steam, but I also try not to do that because it's unfair to my wife.

The global community has become irreversibly interdependent, with the constant movement of people, ideas, goods and resources.

The globalization that has swept away the barriers to the movement of goods, ideas and people has also swept with it barriers that confined and localized security threats.

The international community must do a better job of controlling the risks of nuclear proliferation. Sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle - the production of new fuel, the processing of weapon-usable material, the disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste - would be less vulnerable to proliferation if brought under multinational control.

I worry about a democracy having nuclear weapons as much as a dictatorship having nuclear weapons.

The Egyptians have grown in confidence, theyve tasted freedom, and theres no way back.

If you bet on individuals, instead of the people, you are going to fail.

People talk about smart sanctions and crippling sanctions. Ive never seen smart sanctions, and crippling sanctions cripple everyone, including innocent civilians, and make the government more popular.

I think the ultimate sense of security will be when we come to recognize that we are all part of one human race. Our primary allegiance is to the human race and not to one particular color or border. I think the sooner we renounce the sanctity of these many identities and try to identify ourselves with the human race the sooner we will get a better world and a safer world.

You either have a civil society or you dont.

Israel is the number one rogue state threat to Middle Eastern peace with its nuclear arms and acts of outright aggression towards its peaceful neighbours Syria and Lebanon - and genocidal actions against the marginalised Palestinians of the West Bank - and Gaza in particular.

We still have time to negotiate, we still have time for diplomacy, because there are still a number of issues that have not been clarified, that created a lack of confidence.

Managing a country is like managing a company in many ways. It maybe involves more complicated issues, but its the same skills.

Verification and diplomacy, used in conjunction, can be effective,.

If I could have just 1 per cent of the money spent on global armaments, no one in this world would go to bed hungry.

The Germans should be the first to sympathize with us [Egyptians]. They know how difficult it is to build a democracy following a dictatorship, and they were the first to be critical of Morsi's anti-democratic policies.

If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction.

I hope everybody will go back to the negotiating table. Ive always said this is the only way forward.