Idi Amin Quotes

It's the camel's nose in the tent. Look at Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Idi Amin
every one of these monsters, on seizing power, their first act was to confiscate all firearms in private hands ... ~ Charlton Heston

There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech ~ Idi Amin

I have to keep law and order and it means that I have to kill my enemies before they kill me. ~ Idi Amin

All cultures seem to find a slightly alien local population to carry the Hermes projection. For the Vietnamese it is the Chinese, and for the Chinese it is the Japanese. For the Hindu it is the Moslem; for the North Pacific tribes it was the Chinook; in Latin America and in the American South it is the Yankee. In Uganda it is the East Indians and Pakistanis. In French Quebec it is the English. In Spain the Catalans are "the Jews of Spain". On Crete it is the Turks, and in Turkey it is the Armenians. Lawrence Durrell says that when he lived in Crete he was friends with the Greeks, but that when he wanted to buy some land they sent him to a Turk, saying that a Turk was what you needed for a trade, though of course he couldn't be trusted.
This figure who is good with money but a little tricky is always treated as a foreigner even if his family has been around for centuries. Often he actually is a foreigner, of course. He is invited in when the nation needs trade and he is driven out - or murdered - when nationalism begins to flourish: the Chinese out of Vietnam in 1978, the Japanese out of China in 1949, the Jankees out of South America and Iran, the East Indians out of Uganda under Idi Amin, and the Armenians out of Turkey in 1915-16. The outsider is always used as a catalyst to arouse nationalism, and when times are hard he will always be its victim as well. ~ Lewis Hyde

I do not want to be controlled by any superpower. I myself consider myself the most powerful figure in the world, and that is why I do not let any superpower control me. ~ Idi Amin

You know history better than I do, you've been teaching all your life. Without real opposition you get dictators down the line. Idi, Amin, Mugabe. No democracy without opposition. ~ Nadine Gordimer

He's passing the ball like Idi Amin. ~ Alan Parry

Moynihan, when he was ambassador to the United Nations, produced the same effect when he attacked the Third World. These attacks aroused great admiration here; for example, when he denounced Idi Amin of Uganda as a "racist murderer." The question is not whether Idi Amin is a racist murderer. No doubt the appellation is correct. The question is, what does it mean for Moynihan to make this accusation and for others to applaud his honesty and courage in doing so? Who is Moynihan? He served in four administrations, those of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford - that is to say, administrations that were guilty of racist murder on a scale undreamed of by Idi Amin. Imagine that some minor functionary of the Third Reich had correctly accused someone of being a racist murderer. ~ Noam Chomsky

Because I was playing Idi Amin, who dealt with the colonisation issue, I became aware of this internalised conflict of what it means to be torn between cultures, what it means to be taken over by other cultures. ~ Forest Whitaker

You cannot run faster than a bullet ~ Idi Amin

His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. ~ Idi Amin

On the very last day of shooting [of The Last King of Scotlang], I remember wanting to get the [Idi Amin] character out of me right away, as much as I could. You literally take a bath to wash him off you. Luckily, I went into another part not so long afterwards, so I was kind of able to push it away a little bit. But speech patterns, and little sounds, particularly colloquial things, like the way you ask questions or might respond, were sticking with me, probably because I'd worked so hard to make it a part of my everyday way of expressing myself. ~ Forest Whitaker

It's not for me. I tried human flesh and it's too salty for my taste. ~ Idi Amin

I was pretty much consumed by this character. Even when I was off, I was continually searching to find something else new about [Idi] Amin, and to embed myself deeper into the culture to the point that, in the end, I was so entrenched that I could tell what tribe someone was from just by looking at them. ~ Forest Whitaker

I love the Americans. They are my best friends. ~ Idi Amin

Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking. ~ Idi Amin

Your experience will be a lesson to all of us men to be careful not to marry ladies in very high positions. ~ Idi Amin

I'm a good Muslim and I'm only interested in Islam. ~ Idi Amin

I propose getting rid of conventional armaments and replacing them with reasonably priced hydrogen bombs that will be distributed equally throughout the world. ~ Idi Amin

I myself consider myself the most powerful figure in the world. ~ Idi Amin

Since Idi Amin was from the Sudanese section in the north of Uganda, he was darker skinned. He had more of a blue undertone. So, we did change the coloring of my skin to be closer to his. But otherwise, there were no transformations besides acting. ~ Forest Whitaker

I want to be remembered as a great athlete. As a boxing champion. ~ Idi Amin

I certainly don' think I could've played the character [Idi Amin] the same way without being in Uganda. I loved working in Uganda. ~ Forest Whitaker

No king establishes a kingdom without pouring blood of a nation. ~ Auliq Ice

SO NOW IT'S 1979. Year of the Goat. The Earth Goat. Here are some things you might remember. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected prime minister. Idi Amin had fled Uganda. Jimmy Carter would soon be facing the Iran hostage crisis. In the meantime, he was the first and last president ever to be attacked by a swamp rabbit. That man could not catch a break. ~ Karen Joy Fowler

Although some people felt Adolf Hitler was bad, he was a great man and a real conqueror whose name would never be forgotten. ~ Idi Amin

Moammar Gaddafi, who has called himself the 'Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,' should go down in history with the Emperor Bokassa and Idi Amin as a grotesque reminder of why people have the right to change their government. ~ Elliott Abrams

As an artist, it's a great opportunity to play a character like this [Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland]. And then, as a person, I had never been to the African continent. So, I knew, personally, it would reshape me. ~ Forest Whitaker

I think the place fed me completely. Not only was I in Uganda, but I was around many people who had a personal relationship with Idi Amin. I was eating the food constantly. I was culturally hanging out with the people. You can't help but absorb the energy, and try to get inside the culture. ~ Forest Whitaker

Germany is the place where when Hitler was the prime minister and supreme commander, he burned over six million Jews. This is because Hitler and all German people knew that Israelis are not people who are working in the interest of the world and that is why they burned the Israelis alive with gas in the soil of Germany. ~ Idi Amin

The only legitimate antidote for self-doubt and the shameful weakness it breeds is joyful self-acceptance. ~ Idi Amin

I was a good soldier in the British Army. I was born in a very, very poor family. And I enlisted to escape hunger. But my officers were Scottish and they loved me. The Scots are good, you know. ~ Idi Amin

When faced with a chaotic and convoluted situation, one always thinks that it will take centuries to sort it out. Suddenly a man appears and as if by magic, the tree we thought was doomed takes on new life and starts bearing leaves and fruits and giving shade. (Shireen in Samarkand) ~ Amin Maalouf

The truth is rarely buried; it is merely lying in wait behind veils of modesty, pain, or indifference; the one necessary prerequisite is a passionate desire to lift the veils. ~ Amin Maalouf

Virtue becomes unhealthy if it is not softened by some misdemeanors, and faith quickly becomes cruel if is not subdued by certain doubts. ~ Amin Maalouf

I despise the zeal of the devout, but I have never said that the One is two.
I am not one of those for whom faith is simply fear of judgement. How do I pray? I study a rose, I count the stars, I marvel at the beauty of the creation and how perfectly ordered it is, at man, the most beautiful work of the Creator, his brain thirsting for knowledge, his heart for love, and his senses, all his senses alert or gratified. ~ Amin Maalouf

I have always thought that Heaven invented all the problems, and Hell the solutions. ~ Amin Maalouf

Good and evil has no passport; it speaks in different tongues, wears many skins, and exists everywhere, even in the same person ~ A.H. Amin

Nothing is born of nothing, least of all knowledge, modernity, or enlightened thought; progress is made in tiny surges, in successive laps, like an endless relay race. But there are links without which nothing would be passed on, and for that reason, they deserve the gratitude of all who benefited from them. ~ Amin Maalouf

We are not just visitors on this planet, it belongs to us just as we belong to her, its past is ours, so is its future. ~ Amin Maalouf

The very principle of democracy is founded on the possibility of making alternative choices. There is no longer a need for democracy, since ideology made the idea that "there is no alternative" acceptable. Adherence to a meta-social principle of superior rationality allows for the elimination of the necessity and possibility of choosing. The so-called principle of the rationality of "markets" exactly fills this function in the ideology of obsolescent capitalism. Democratic practice is thus emptied of all content in the way is open to what I have called "low-intensity democracy" - that is, to electoral buffooneries where parades of majorettes take the place of programs, to the society of the spectacle. Delegitimized by these practices, politics is undone, begins to drift and loses its potential power to give meaning and coherence to alternative societal projects. ~ Samir Amin

I no more believe in simplistic solutions than I do in simplistic identieties. The world is a complex machine that can't be dismantled with a srewdriver. But that shouldn't prevent us from observing, from trying to understand, from discussing, and sometimes suggesting a subject for reflection. ~ Amin Maalouf

Amin is the shame of the whole world. The fact that he managed to rule so long and commit so many crimes was only possible thanks to the hypocrisy of the East and the West who were waging the Cold War for world domination. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, but they also expected much less and were less intent on controlling the future. We are of the arrogant generations who believe a lasting happiness was promised to us at birth. Promised? By whom? ~ Amin Maalouf

You can't say history teaches us this or that; it gives us more questions than answers, and many answers to every question. ~ Amin Maalouf

The rejection of Western democracy derives from the same rejection of secularism but was further sharpened by the Saudi Arabian establishment's aversion to democracy's subversive streak and the threat it posed to the Saudi monarchy if unleashed. Saudi scholars such as Sheikh Bakr Ibn Abu Zaid consistently attacked democracy and the freedoms it flaunted as anti-Islamic. Mohammed Yusuf was heavily influenced by the writings of Saudi-based scholars such as Bakr Ibn Abu Zaid, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ibn Abd-Allah Ibn Baaz (1910-99), and Sheikh Muhammad al-Amin ash Shanqiti (1907-73). As mentioned before, all of Yusuf's opponents side-stepped the issue of democracy being un-Islamic, thereby making the issue appear incontestable or settled. ~ Kyari Mohammed

Yes indeed, both Muslim and Jewish!I, her father, am Muslim, at least on paper; her mother is Jewish, at least in theory. With us, religion is transmitted through the father; among Jews, through the mother. Therefore, according to the Muslims, Nadia was Muslim; according to the Jews, she was Jewish. She herself might have chosen one or the other, or neither, she chose to be both at once ... Yes, both at once and more. She was proud of all the bloodlines that had converged in her, roads of conquest or exile from central Asia, Anatolia, the Ukraine, Arab, Bessarabia, Armenia, Bavaria ... She refused to divide out her blood, her soul. ~ Amin Maalouf

My name is Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the former H. Rap Brown. I am a devoted servant of Allah, and an unwavering devotee to His cause. For more than 30 years, I have been tormented and persecuted by my enemies for reasons of race and belief. ~ H. Rap Brown

Mal'akh was dragging Langdon across the living room when the congregation declared, "Amen!" Amon, Mal'akh corrected. Egypt is the cradle of your religion. The god Amon was the prototype for Zeus ... for Jupiter ... and for every modern face of God. To this day, every religion on earth shouted out a variation of his name. Amen! Amin! Aum! ~ Dan Brown

So, a word to all you Femin-Idi-Amins: Stop "liberating" moms by trying to
make them join the workforce. They're already doing the job that God put
them here to do: Everything. ~ Stephen Colbert

Are you certain that a man's life begins with his birth? ~ Amin Maalouf

What's a year in comparison with eternity? what's a day? an hour? a second? Such measures have meaning only for a heart that's still beating. ~ Amin Maalouf

The pursuit of origins is a way of rescuing territory from death and oblivion, a reconquest that ought to be patient, devoted, relentless and faithful. ~ Amin Maalouf

It seems clear that the Arab East still sees the West as a natural enemy. Against that enemy, any hostile action-be it political, military, or based on oil-is considered no more than legitimate vengeance. And there can be no doubt that the schism between these two worlds dates from the Crusades, deeply felt by the Arabs, even today, as an act of rape ~ Amin Maalouf

During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba. ~ Amin Maalouf

Let us thank God for having made us this gift of death, so that life is to have meaning; of night, that day is to have meaning; silence, that speech is to have meaning; illness, that health is to have meaning; war, that peace is to have meaning. Let us give thanks to Him for having given us weariness and pain, so that rest and joy are to have meaning. Let us give thanks to him, whose wisdom is infinite. ~ Amin Maalouf

Can we reconcile indefinitely these two imperatives: the desire to preserve every individual's special identity and the need for Europeans to be able to communicate with one another all the time and as freely as possible? We cannot leave it to time to solve the dilemma and prevent people from engaging, a few years hence, in bitter and fruitless linguistic conflicts. We know all too well what time will do.
The only possible answer is a voluntary policy aimed at strengthening linguistic diversity and based on a simple idea: nowadays everybody obviously needs three languages. The first is his language of identity; the third is English. Between the two we have to promote a third language, freely chosen, which will often but not always be another European language. This will be for everyone the main foreign language taught at school, but it will also be much more than that
the language of the heart, the adopted language, the language you have married, the language you love. ~ Amin Maalouf

I have the profoundest respect for people who behave in a generous way because of religion. But I come from a country where the misuse of religion has had catastrophic consequences. One must judge people not by what faith they proclaim but by what they do. ~ Amin Maalouf

Amin, you're not making sense to me. Things have always been this way, since the beginning of time. Some die so others can be saved. You don't believe in the salvation of others? ~ Yasmina Khadra

Amin knew that neither West nor East would criticize him for fear that he would support the other side. He felt he was untouchable and he said so openly. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

The Arabs were Germany's natural friends ... They were therefore prepared to cooperate with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in a war, not only negatively in the commission of acts of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions, but also positively by the formation of the Arab Legion. In this struggle, the Arabs were striving for the independence and the unity of Palestine, Syria and Iraq ... ~ Haj Amin Al-Husseini

Taking the line of least resistance, we lump the most different people together under the same heading. Taking the line of least resistance, we ascribe to them collective crimes, collective acts and opinions. "The Serbs have massacred…", "The English have devastated…", "The Jews have confiscated…", "The Blacks have torched", "The Arabs refuse…". We blithely express sweeping judgments on whole peoples, calling them "hardworking" and "ingenious", or "lazy", "touchy", "sly", "proud", or "obstinate". And sometimes this ends in bloodshed."

– Amin Maalouf "On Identity ~ Amin Maalouf

A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous. ~ Amin Maalouf

Perhaps writing only arouses the passions in order to allay them, as beaters flush out the game in order to expose it to the hunter's arrows. ~ Amin Maalouf

When a man is rich, whether in gold or in knowledge, he must treat the poverty of others with consideration. ~ Amin Maalouf

It's not often in life that you can misbehave for the good of the cause ~ Amin Maalouf

Life is not so long that one can grow tired of it ~ Amin Maalouf

When they learned what orders they were to execute, they fell into a panic. They were concerned about releasing more than three thousand people from prisons, internment camps and exile. House arrest was to be withdrawn from more than a hundred. 'No, it didn't only apply to bandits, common criminals and hired mercenaries. The pardons were mostly for dissidents. Among the pardoned were henchmen of the deposed King Rhyd and people of the usurper Idi, their virulent partisans. And not only those who had supported in word: most were in prison for sabotage, assassination attempts and armed revolts. The minister of internal affairs was horrified and papa extremely worried. 'While ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

All pleasures must be paid for, do not despise those that state their price. ~ Amin Maalouf

Why should we take the diversity of human cultures less seriously than the diversity of animal or plant species? Ought not our just desire to preserve our environment extend to the human environment itself? Our world would be a dreary place, both from the natural and from the cultural point of view, if the only surviving species were those we consider "useful," together with a few we judge to be decorative or that have acquired symbolic value. ~ Amin Maalouf