Words matter. These are the best Mohamed ElBaradei Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
If a country is suspected of going nuclear, you need to understand why. Why does it feel insecure?
I’m used to politics at an international level: people put together an argument and, even if you vehemently disagree with them, well, you can recognise it’s an argument and respond.
So, we need to delegitimize the nuclear weapon, and by de-legitimizing… meaning trying to develop a different system of security that does not depend on nuclear deterrence.
People feel repressed by their own governments; they feel unfairly treated by the outside world; they wake up in the morning, and who do they see – they see people being shot and killed: all Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur.
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 long as some of us choose to rely on nuclear weapons, we continue to risk that these same weapons will become increasingly attractive to others.
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.
Sanctions are a bad idea.
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.
We continue to have nuclear weapons relied on as a weapon of choice. If that policy were to continue, we continue to have countries who are in a security bind, if you like, or perceive themselves to be in security bind to look for acquisition of nuclear weapons.
The global community has become irreversibly interdependent, with the constant movement of people, ideas, goods and resources.
If a huge number of people call for change, the government will have to react. If you want to avoid uprisings, or demonstrations, you need to respond to the people’s desperate need for change.
The Nobel Peace Prize is a powerful message. A durable peace is not a single achievement, but an environment, a process and a commitment.
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.
Democracy is more than a ballot box.
The time is right for a political solution and the way is negotiations.
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.
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.
If you have nothing to hide, there is no reason not to be transparent.
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.
There is no religion that was founded on intolerance – and no religion that does not value the sanctity of human life.
You will not really have durable peace without a proper security structure in the Middle East.
How can you run for president if you don’t know the job description?
It is going to take a long time to switch Egypt into a democracy.
Nobody wants any country to have nuclear weapons.
I hope everybody will go back to the negotiating table. I’ve always said this is the only way forward.
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.
My father taught me that you have to stand by your principles.
Your economic and social development is linked to the kind of regime you have.
America is always a good target for a populist. In many countries, particularly authoritarian systems, if you want to get an extra bonus, you bash the Americans.
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.
You don’t get the fox to be in charge of the chicken coop. You don’t give the outgoing regime – which has been practicing dictatorship, is an authoritarian system, it’s a bunch of military people – the task of changing Egypt into a second republic, a new Egypt with democracy, freedom, rights, etc.
I couldn’t have imagined that I would live long enough to see Egypt emancipated from decades of repression.
If Egypt were going to change, it is going to change through the young people.
Discipline is part of my professional training as a lawyer.
Iran’s goal is not to become another North Korea – a nuclear weapons possessor but a pariah in the international community – but rather Brazil or Japan, a technological powerhouse with the capacity to develop nuclear weapons if the political winds were to shift, while remaining a nonnuclear weapons state.
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.
Every country has the right to nuclear technology as long as they use it safely, peacefully and in a secure way.
If you bet on individuals instead of the people, you are going to fail.
I think people are distrustful of politicians and are looking for someone who is telling the truth with no hidden agenda.
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.
The U.S. is not the holder of truth.
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.
I cannot bear the responsibility for one drop of blood.
