Top 124 Somalia Quotes & Sayings

My mother was an activist; so was my father. They came from a generation of young Somalis who were actively involved in getting independence for Somalia in 1960.

Whatever happens in Mogadishu, in Somalia, will happen in Great Britain. We have interlocking interests.

Somalia is an important story in the world, and it needed to be told.

Along the borders to Ethiopia and Somalia, anarchy reigns, the police and military have retreated quite some distance.

I left Somalia when I was seven years old, but I witnessed a whole year in a war.

[Somali maritime violence] is a response to greedy Western nations, who invade and exploit Somalia's water resources illegally. It is not a piracy, it is self defence. It is defending the Somalia children's food.

I think the biggest challenge for Somalia has been the sense that it is a hopeless case of incomprehensible internal conflicts and there is nothing we can do.

You need the will to disarm the civilian population. If we can do it in Somalia, we can do it here.

When I leave Somalia I will leave buildings but not people.

We certainly would be happy for more help, but not at the price of condescension and arrogance. If the Europeans believe they can afford to be less committed in Somalia, please - we can deal with it ourselves.

The same men who are placing all these outrageous restrictions on women’s freedoms in southern Somalia – that type of mentality – that’s what I had to deal with in captivity.

The criteria, for me, is movie star. It's Hollywood. Not Somalia.

I grew up in Somalia, in Saudi Arabia, in Ethiopia, and in Kenya. I came to Europe in 1992, when I was 22, and became a member of Parliament in Holland.

I was always made aware of inequality in society, that there was a class system. In Somalia, we have clan structures. My mother's family is ethnically not Somali, and so we spoke often about what it meant to be 'other' in that way.

The really disturbing thing about Somalia is that in a country where there are few economic opportunities, pirates are perceived as glamorous and are held in awe by young boys who aspire to their lifestyle.

All we hear about Africa in the West is Darfur, Zimbabwe, Congo, Somalia, as if that is all there is.

The people of Somalia just do not have a voice. They are to me the most forgotten people in the world.

Accompanied by an Australian photographer named Nigel Brennan, I'd gone to Somalia to work as a freelance journalist, on a trip that was meant to last only ten days.

Imagine a weight-loss program at the end of which, instead of better health, good looks, and hot romantic prospects, you die. Somalia had become just this kind of spa.

Women in Somalia face almost unimaginable oppression.

There might be children in Somalia or the Arctic who have never heard of 'Hamlet' or the 'Great Gatsby.' But you can bet they know 'Tarzan.'

My first assignment was 12 weeks in Afghanistan. After that, I covered the Indian election for two months. Then I got a phone call saying, 'Hey, we want you in Brazil,' and the same happened for Somalia.

We women in Somalia are trying to be leaders in our community.

I think the epicentre of terrorism whether you call it cesspit or whatever you want to call it, shift, if you asked me a while ago, I would have said Somalia, Somalia has quietened a bit - and I think the epicentre right now is in Northern Nigeria.

Kelly, there are people in Somalia who would die for a banana.

We should teach the foreigners and colonialists that Somalia cannot be led by other people and that the traitors who fled the country will never lead Somalia.

My stepmom's from Somalia, my baby sister is African American, my dad was always English, I'm a white man... You may have noticed.

I want people to know there is more to Somalia than looting and piracy.

Somalia is facing many problems, I don't even know where to start.

In the current situation, it is very difficult for foreign NGOs to work in Somalia because it is so unstable and dangerous. I really hope that my country will one day rise out of this mess and reach the potential it has.

For the security of the UK, it matters a lot for Somalia to become a more stable place.

I don't have much in me left for Somalia, because the country is so broken, it's not realistic to daydream about it.

Our assistance in Somalia has been remarkably effective and successful, and we have helped with very small resources - a large group of people and we can now do even more.

A little goes a long way in Somalia: $5 will feed a person there for about two weeks.

The long-term solution in preventing another famine in Somalia is to promote self-reliance.

I'd love to work with children. I've set up the charity, and that's going well. We've got a lot of projects we're doing in Somalia, so I'd like to see how we're doing there.

The same men who are placing all these outrageous restrictions on women's freedoms in southern Somalia - that type of mentality - that's what I had to deal with in captivity.

I come from Somalia. We start working young, and we understand that kind of life. I would be bored to death not doing anything creative.

I think now Somalia is turning a corner and we can, with the new political development, build on momentum - really build a peaceful future.

Somaliland and Somalia at large have been receiving now hundreds of thousands of returnees that they had to accommodate with very small resources.

A drone is a high-tech version of an old army and a musket. It ought to be used in Somalia to hunt bad guys, but not in America. I don't want to see it hovering over anybody's home.

What worries me is that we want to close down our relationship to the world at large. In other words, people's instincts are overwhelmed by the amount of images, or they can't distinguish anymore between Rwanda or Bosnia or Somalia.

British intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan swelled the grievances home-grown fanatics fed off, while al Qaeda morphed and re-grouped in lawless sanctuaries from Somalia to Yemen.

I couldn't be happier teaming up to make the feature with a company as innovative as VICE. There is so much the world doesn't know about piracy in Somalia and the people involved, and I'm excited to be telling a story of piracy in Somalia from a different perspective.

When the US withdrew their troops from Somalia, I recall making a comment that [in] the way the peacekeepers had been withdrawn from Somalia, the impression had been given that the easiest way to unravel a peacekeeping operation is to kill a few soldiers.

While other faiths are also often oppressive, sharia law is especially oppressive. Its interpretations stipulate the execution of Muslims who commit adultery, renounce their faith (apostates) or have same-sex relationships. Sharia methods of execution, such as stoning, are particularly brutal and cruel - witness the stoning to death this week in Somalia of a 20-year-old woman divorcee who was accused of adultery. This is the fourth stoning of an adulterer in Somalia in the last year.

I am grateful to my father for sending me to school, and that we moved from Somalia to Kenya, where I learned English.

We're going to take out seven countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.

Life in Somalia before the civil war was beautiful. When the war happened, I was 8 years old and at that stage of understanding the world in a different way.

To some extent, Rwanda became a victim of the Somalia experience.

I had friends from Somalia and Eritrea and all these different counties, and I was getting to learn about people that I would have never known anything about.

African history is filled with experiences of people shooting their way to power and then splintering into factions, like in Somalia and Liberia.

The U.S., often in secret, carries out counterterrorism missions all the time, with drones in places like Yemen and Somalia.

It was a slow understanding that the lack of education in a country like Somalia creates these huge social problems.

Going into Somalia, I didn't anticipate how many people's lives would be affected by it. In hindsight, I certainly wish I had taken more time to think about that, but I can't change it.

I don't recognize my people anymore. I feel Somalia is lost. There is no Somalia. It is just a name.

Somalia is very dangerous, and no one knows that better than I.

What happened to me in Somalia doesn't define me.

I have big hope for the Canadian government to help Somalia with something concrete and tangible. I haven't seen that.

The experience of Somalia shows that famine in the late 20th century is not a consequence of a shortage of food. On the contrary, famines are spurred on as result of a global oversupply of grain staples.