Iraqi State Quotes

Facing a deteriorating economy and a weakening hold over the populace, the Iraqi state under Saddam Hussein opted to revitalize tribal leaders and conservative practices as a means of stabilizing state power; those conservative practices were not an inherent feature of a predominantly Muslim country. ~ Nadje Al-Ali

It is convenient for Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair to say the rise of the Islamic State has nothing to do with the Iraq War because that takes the culpability off their shoulders. The Islamic State is a product of the Iraq War. It took about a 100 years to build the Iraqi state, and the Americans and the British destroyed it in an afternoon. ~ Vijay Prashad

Shocked and grieved by sudden death of Adjutant General Sobolev.' She sobbed and blew her nose, then continued reading. "'He will be hard for the Russian army to replace and, of course, this loss is greatly lamented by all true soldiers. It is sad to lose such useful people who are so devoted to their work. Alexander.'" Fandorin raised his eyebrows slightly - the telegram had sounded rather cold to him. "Hard to replace"? Meaning that the general could be replaced after all? "Sad" - and nothing more? "The lying in state and funeral ~ Boris Akunin

She was passionate about knitting because it allowed her to reach a state of peacefulness, and she loved to embroider because it let her express her creativity. Both activities were liberating. They allowed her to exist outside of time. ~ Laura Esquivel

An independent state does not pay too dear a price for its independence in accepting the sufferings of war when it cannot avoid them; a state which has lost its independence may find at least some compensation in the fact that its protector procures for it peace with its neighbours. ~ Theodor Mommsen

A bare two years after Vasco da Gama's voyage a Portuguese fleet led by Pedro Alvarez Cabral arrived on the Malabar coast. Cabral delivered a letter from the king of Portugal to the Samudri (Samudra-raja or Sea-king), the Hindu ruler of the city-state of Calicut, demanding that he expel all Muslims from his kingdom as they were enemies of the 'Holy Faith'. He met with a blank refusal; then afterwards the Samudra steadfastly maintained that Calicut had always been open to everyone who wished to trade there…

During those early years the people who had traditionally participated in the Indian Ocean trade were taken completely by surprise. In all the centuries in which it had flourished and grown, no state or kings or ruling power had ever before tried to gain control of the Indian Ocean trade by force of arms. The territorial and dynastic ambitions that were pursued with such determination on land were generally not allowed to spill over into the sea.

Within the Western historiographical record the unarmed character of the Indian Ocean trade is often represented as a lack, or failure, one that invited the intervention of Europe, with its increasing proficiency in war. When a defeat is as complete as was that of the trading cultures of the Indian Ocean, it is hard to allow the vanquished the dignity of nuances of choice and preference. Yet it is worth allowing for the possibility that the peaceful traditions of the oceanic trade may have been, in a quiet and ~ Amitav Ghosh

Comedy makes the subversion of the existing state of affairs possible. ~ Dario Fo

The Bill of Rights is largely a prescription for preventing government from restricting the flow of information and ideas. But the Founding Fathers did not foresee that tyranny by government might be superseded by another sort of problem altogether, namely, the corporate state, which through television now controls the flow of public discourse in America. I raise no strong objection to this fact (at least not here) and have no intention of launching into a standard-brand complaint against the corporate state. I merely note the fact with apprehension, as did George Gerbner, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication, when he wrote:

Television is the new state religion run by a private Ministry of Culture (the three networks), offering a universal curriculum for all people, financed by a form of hidden taxation without representation. You pay when you wash, not when you watch, and whether or not you care to watch. ~ Neil Postman

State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production.
Quoted in The Situationists and the City, pg. 194 ~ Friedrich Engels

In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don't want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty
or, it may be, war and want
but we must vote for a man. ~ B.F. Skinner

Those tax-exempt bonds were put in so that a town or a state or a government could sell more bonds than it ought to. ~ Will Rogers

Fantasy, an unflagging optimism is necessary for a writer at all stages of this rough game. A kind of madness is therefore necessary, when there is every logical reason for a state of depression and discouragement. Perhaps the fact that I can react with utter gloom to this is what keeps me from being psychotic and keeps me merely neurotic. I am doing quite a good day's work today. But I am also aware of the madness that actually sustains me, and I am not made more comfortable or happy by it. ~ Patricia Highsmith

I have always thought of government as a kind of organism with an insatiable appetite for money, whose natural state is to grow forever unless you do something to starve it. ~ Ronald Reagan

I desire to establish a profound state of peacefulness, an imperturbable stillness of mind, an unconditioned mode of being that is free from mind contaminants of negative thoughts. I pray to undertake a productive emotional, intellectual, and spiritual journey seeking the highest level of personal realization that defines wholeness and finality. In stillness, a state of mental quietude, we enter the worldly womb of creativity. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

An element of virtually every national security threat and crime problem the FBI faces is cyber-based or facilitated. We face sophisticated cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, organized cyber syndicates, and terrorists. ~ James Comey

Peace is inside us, it's a natural state of mind;
to find it, we create war, destroy the world like a blind. ~ Debasish Mridha

Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It's a state of mind-you could call it character in action. ~ Vince Lombardi

The liberal ideals of the Enlightenment could be realized only in very partial and limited ways in the emerging capitalist order: "Democracy with its mono of equality of all citizens before the law and Liberalism with its right of man over his own person both were wrecked on the realities of capitalist economy," Rocker correctly observed. Those who are compelled to rent themselves to owners of capital in order to survive are deprived of one of the most fundamental rights: the right to productive, creative and fulfilling work under one's own control, in solidarity with others. And under the ideological constraints of capitalist democracy, the prime necessity is to satisfy the needs of those in a position to make investment decisions; if their demands are not satisfied, there will be no production, no work, no social services, no means for survival. All necessarily subordinate themselves and their interests to the overriding need to serve the interests of the owners and managers of the society, who, furthermore, with their control over resources, are easily able to shape the ideological system (the media, schools, universities and so on) in their interests, to determine the basic conditions within which the political process will function, its parameters and basic agenda, and to call upon the resources of state violence, when need be, to suppress any challenge to entrenched power. The point was formulated succinctly in the early days of the liberal democratic revolutions by Joh ~ Noam Chomsky

Jane Austen has often been praised as a natural historian. She is a naturalist among tame animals. She does not study men (as Dostoevsky does) in his wild state before he has been domesticated. Her men and women are essentially men and women of the fireside. ~ Robert Wilson Lynd

No, we are not the master of the state, said King. We are not the servant of the state. We are the conscience of the state. The churches or the religious community should be, I think, the conscience of the state. We're not just service providers. ~ Jim Wallis

But the dignity of human life is unbreakably linked to the existence of the personal-infinite God. It is because there is a personal-infinite God who has made men and women in His own image that they have a unique dignity of life as human beings. Human life then is filled with dignity, and the state and humanistically oriented law have no right and no authority to take human life arbitrarily in the way it is being taken. ~ Francis A. Schaeffer

Aid the sick; thank the Divine Power for the state of equilibrium you are able to conserve. ~ Chico Xavier

Today, more than ever, citizens demand with good reason that moral and ethical principles be upheld and that exemplariness preside over our public life. And the king, as the head of state, must not only be an example but also a servant to that just and legitimate demand of the citizens. ~ King Felipe VI

Rather like "Orwellian", the term "Kafkaesque" has come to be used, often enough by those who have not read a word of Kafka, yo describe what are perceived as typically or even uniquely modern traumas:existential alienation, isolation and insecurity, the labyrinth of state bureaucracy, the corrupt or whimsical abuse of totalitarian power, the impenetrable tangle of legal systems, the knock on the door in the middle of the night ... ~ Franz Kafka

A lot of dear folks today are either in a state of cholera morbus or St. Vitus's dance [ the twitching nerve disorder chorea]. We need to get going for God. Faith in itself has no value unless it connects you with God. The Bible is constantly trying to wake us up: "Stir up the gift of God" (2 Tim. 1:6); "Break up your fallow ground" (Hos. 10:12); "Gird up the loins of your mind" (1 Peter 1:13). We need to take ourselves by the nape of the neck and make ourselves do what we know we ought to do, whether we feel like it or not.
Some ~ Vance Havner

Not in the state of unconsciousness, but in full awareness when the higher Power will descend into and direct us, then only the yogic life will begin. ~ Sri Aurobindo

Happiness depends more upon the state of mind - and body, perhaps - than upon circumstances and events. ~ Flora Thompson

The trick is staying found, I think. It's easy to get lost when your life is constantly in a state of disarray. The right path gets obscured as quickly as you make it."
He put a hand on my shoulder and told me solemnly, "That's why you find something or someone that guides you, someone that won't lose you, and someone that you don't mind getting lost with when that inevitably happens. ~ Jay Crownover

There's a bizarre prejudice that exists in the New York publishing establishment that any work outside the tri-state area is being done by trained chimpanzees, that geography screens out sensibility. There's an idea that all Los Angeles writing is about the movie industry, that it's vulgar, shallow and banal. ~ Kate Braverman

I'm not saying these flying discs don't really exist, but nobody living in Kansas City has seen them and that's a dry state. ~ Jack Paar

Next week John Boehner will be sitting behind Barack Obama at the State of the Union address. I think Obama should purposely try to embarrass him by telling the story of 'Old Yeller.' The state of our Union is strong, but not so good for one special dog.' ~ Bill Maher

Phoenix is great. I love Phoenix, .. I love Scottsdale. I love the James Hotel. I have a Kathy Griffin suite. I love -what's that place called? AZ 88. I had never had a cheese crisp, so I went to - oh, can't remember. We went to the State Fair, where I was all about the deep-fried Twinkie. I ate every deep-fried thing - oh, it was heavenly. I ate until I got sick. ~ Kathy Griffin

A coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder. ~ Edward Luttwak

We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai. ~ David Ben-Gurion

I expect to see, on television, the porcine Governor of the State of Michigan decrying to the whole world that my client should be in jail for rendering kindness and compassion, primarily because the porcine Governor of the State of Michigan is a religious nut. ~ Geoffrey Fieger

Under the notion that unregulated market-driven values and relations should shape every domain of human life, the business model of governance has eviscerated any viable notion of social responsibility while furthering the criminalization of social problems and cutbacks in basic social services, especially for young people, the elderly, people of color, and the impoverished.36 At this historical juncture there is a merging of violence and governance along with the systemic disinvestment in and breakdown of institutions and public spheres that have provided the minimal conditions for democracy. This becomes obvious in the emergence of a surveillance state in which social media not only become new platforms for the invasion of privacy but further legitimate a culture in which monitoring functions are viewed as both necessary and benign. Meanwhile, the state-sponsored society of hyper-fear increasingly regards each and every person as a potential terrorist suspect. ~ Henry A. Giroux

Adolf von Gordon's last words at the trial are ironic: I should be far from passing a final judgment on Talat the man. What can be said objectively I said at the start. But I do wish to state one more thing: like many of his comrades, he certainly worked for the extermination of the Armenian people in order to create a purely pan-Turkish state; he certainly here used means that seem intolerable to us Europeans. ~ Eric Bogosian