Saudis Quotes

Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar, and for our Qatari friends, ~ John McCain

Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into her private hedge fund. The Russians, the Saudis, the Chinese - all gave money to Bill And Hillary and got favourable treatment in return. ~ Donald Trump

If we had continued making progress at the rate we were during the Carter administration, we would be free of oil imports from Saudi Arabia today. ~ Jay Inslee

I understand that and I have had very candid discussions with Saudi leaders in the past. I respect their culture and their heritage and their traditions, but I think that they now, as they move forward, will have to start examining these traditions and these practices to see whether or not change is appropriate. ~ Colin Powell

In fact, an Islamic revival - already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia - is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian - and hence infidel - control. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

I would like to find a way in which people in Saudi Arabia could learn that they can be something other than a Muslim. Some people may not realize this. Of course, there is the problem that you can get in trouble or get stoned. ~ Richard Dawkins

We won't stop until the first Saudi license is issued to a woman. ~ Manal Al-Sharif

People are saying, "Oh my God, Saudi Arabia has changed." It's a contradiction. Do you want us to lead, or do you want us to play a supporting role? ~ Adel Al-Jubeir

So when you hear about Hillary's [Clinton] dishonesty, or the emails, or taking millions from the Saudis and other Middle Eastern dictatorships - remember, this is not about politics. ~ Newt Gingrich

I know from my short time in the kingdom that all Saudis worry over Saudi opinion. All Saudis I have met act more relaxed around Westerners. ~ Jean Sasson

I saw a report yesterday. There's so much oil, all over the world, they don't know where to dump it. And Saudi Arabia says, 'Oh, there's too much oil.' They - they came back yesterday. Did you see the report? They want to reduce oil production. Do you think they're our friends? They're not our friends. ~ Donald Trump

Indeed, Robert Jordan, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, noted in 2003: "We have noticed lately in influential mosques the imam has condemned terrorism and preached in favor of tolerance, then closed the sermon with 'O God, please destroy the Jews, the infidels, and all who support them.' "53 And while it was true that the Saudis managed to get Sheikh Ali bin al-Khudair, in late November 2003, to renounce his radical jihadi stance on prime-time Saudi television, 54 al-Khudair actually dealt largely with the doctrine of takfir - proclaiming Muslims to be infidels. His renunciation might help stop militant Muslim violence against other Muslims, but it simply did not address the problem of jihadi violence against Americans or others outside of Saudi Arabia. His statement seemed designed primarily to preclude attacks against the Saudi government and foreigners inside Saudi Arabia. ~ Dore Gold

Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born revolutionary who is believed by most Arab and Iranian observers to be the inspiration of the attacks in New York and Washington, is the best known of the Islamic militants to have emerged in the past 20 years and the least difficult to fathom. ~ James Buchan

Yet I couldn't connect this racial purity with the warmth of the toothless, lined Bedouin women who showed me such affection in the hospital. I thought about the Bedouin patients I had attended in Riyadh and what they had taught me of acceptance. Surely these Bedouin were the purest Saudis of all, Daughters of Arabia, borne of tribal forebears who had roamed Arabia before the slick of oil wealth suffocated their culture, washing them up like half-dead seagulls into the new urban metropolis of modern Saudi Arabia. I decided it had to be wealth which made the stark difference. All I had to do was think back to the "real" Saudis I had met in Riyadh, so different than the women sharing this tent with me. ~ Qanta A. Ahmed

I think oil prices are down for two reasons. One is, there is a lot of supply. There is a lot of supply because the U.S. now produces a lot of oil and there is a lot of supply because the Saudis seem to want to produce a lot of oil, maybe to punish the Iranians and the Russians. ~ David Wessel

I think Saudi Arabia often finances radical Islam and the teaching of hatred to the West and hatred of Americans. I think it is important that we know that. It's important that we know that there is a threat within and a threat without. I think we can stop it with more aggressive use of actual constitutional tools. ~ Rand Paul

If we don't have a more serious energy policy, the difference between a good day and bad day for America from here on will hinge on how the 86-year-old king of Saudi Arabia manages ... change. ~ Thomas Friedman

For years many in the oil-rich states argued that their enormous wealth would bring modernizations. They pointed to the impressive appetites of Saudis and Kuwaitis for things Western, from McDonald's hamburgers to Rolex watches to Cadillac limousines. but importing Western good is easy; importing the inner stuffing of modern society - a free market, political parties, accountability, the rule of law - is difficult and even dangerous for the ruling elites ~ Fareed Zakaria

Nixon would like to consign us to to the level of the most backward countries in the whole Middle East. Why lower us to the standard of the Saudis rather than raising the Saudis to meet us? ~ Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

I am told that the Saudis have organized 34 countries who want to join in the battle against terrorism. ~ John Kasich

I think we can make a contribution to their [Saudi Arabia] thinking as they decide how they should deal with the economic and social challenges that they are facing. ~ Colin Powell

If you do not learn English in this country, you cannot get anywhere. We are in America. We are not in Mexico, we are not in China, we are not in Saudi Arabia - we speak English in this country! And what bilingual education does, is keep them from learning English, so they are doomed to be second-class citizens. ~ Rafael Cruz

In my opinion, the difference between the crusaders and us was a matter of degree. Europe's medieval Catholics claimed their goal was to save Muslims from purgatory; we claimed that we wanted to help the Saudis modernize. ~ John Perkins

It is no secret that many Islamic movements in the Middle East tend to be authoritarian, and some of the so-called 'Islamic regimes' such as Saudi Arabia, Iran - and the worst case was the Taliban in Afghanistan - they are pretty authoritarian. No doubt about that. ~ Mustafa Akyol

Saud bin Abd al-Aziz was the moon-faced, shortsighted, bespectacled son of the old founder of Saudi Arabia, who'd always been his father's protege but had never quite lived up to everything that his father had. ~ Robert Lacey

Look, I don't think President Obama would have bowed to the ruler of Saudi Arabia if he didn't have oil to the degree that the Saudis do. I think they and other producing states, almost all of whom, except Norway and Canada, are dictatorships or autocratic systems, have thrown their weight around because of oil. ~ James Woolsey

One of my trips was to meet with the Gulf Cooperation Council with all the Saudi foreign ministers, and when we started the meeting I said 'Perhaps you've noticed that I'm not dressed the same as my predecessors, but no-one had a problem and I was never treated with anything other than respect ... So I did not have problems with that, interestingly enough. ~ Madeleine Albright

The Saudis would struggle in Europe because of that problem with those prayers five times a day. ~ Don Howe

The Saudis considered the petroleum under their soil a gift from God, but accessing its value laid within man's capacity. ~ Ellen R. Wald

Instead of fighting ISIS, (the Saudis) have focused more on a campaign to oust Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. ~ Bernie Sanders

The Saudis have never shown any respect for human rights, either now or in the past. Even a petty burglar faces having one of his hands chopped off. The liberal press in America prefers to ignore all this, although they don't hesitate to blacken the reputation of Iran. ~ Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

We have a war against Daesh (the Islamic State, or IS) in Syria. A coalition that was led by the United States, with Saudi Arabia being one of the first members of that coalition. ~ Adel Al-Jubeir

Saudi hijackers first came into contact with al-Qaeda and went through Terrorism 101 when they signed up for the jihad in Afghanistan. ~ Thomas Friedman

Cemetery of al-Baqi in Medina, they utterly destroyed the tombs of the Imams Hasan, Ali ibn Husayn, Muhammed ibn Ali, and Jafar, as well as the tomb of Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad. In Mecca, they destroyed the Cemetery of Mualla, where the ancestors of Muhammad and his first wife Khadija were buried. These prominent destructions were part of a pattern of violence that witnessed the Wahhabi Saudis smash buildings, tombs and mosques associated with the history of the Prophet and his family and which were venerated by Shia. ~ Jesse Harasta

The Saudis, and in some cases the CIA, had encouraged and funded their foreign jihads, and these men had seen combat, lived hard in the mountains, did what their religion asked them to do. Then they came home to Egypt and were rewarded with a death sentence. The result was the creation of a standing army of jihadis who couldn't go home. They would go on to found al-Qaeda, which became something of a jihadi veterans association. History is always obvious in retrospect, but in this case the rise of al-Qaeda should have been fairly easy to predict. ~ Richard Engel

India is the Saudi Arabia of human resources for the 21st century. The power that we used to get from oil in 20th century, we will get it from people like you in 21st century. ~ Rahul Gandhi

We are not shrinking from talking to Saudis or anyone else in the region, but it is up to each nation in the region to decide on its own how it will proceed and at what pace. There are other nations in the region that had similar policies to Saudi Arabia that are starting to make changes, such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Morocco. And so it takes time but when you see the need for such changes, then changes tend to follow. ~ Colin Powell

You become an anti-Semite. And as powerful as the Israeli lobby is, the Saudi lobby is just as powerful. In fact, the Saudis probably have more money to throw around, and they suborn former U.S. intelligence officials, former ambassadors, former generals to support them from within by lobbying the Congress and other American institutions. ~ Michael Scheuer

Actually, King Abdullah, under his supervision and guidance, has established a dialogue in Saudi Arabia whereby all the population, whether Shiite or Sunnis from north, south, west or east, they can get together and exchange their views. ~ Al-Waleed Bin Talal

The big risk in Saudi Arabia is that Ghawar's rate of decline increases to an alarming point. That will set bells ringing all over the oil world because Ghawar underpins Saudi output and Saudi undergirds worldwide production. ~ Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari

We clearly need to break our addiction on Saudi Arabian oil that is a security threat to the United States. ~ Jay Inslee

The Saudi government's denial of basic rights to women is not only wrong, it hurts Saudi Arabia's economic development, modernization and prosperity. ~ Barbara Boxer

Obama was the most powerful man in the world, but that didn't mean he could control the forces at play in the Middle East. There was no Nelson Mandela who could lead a country to absolution for its sins and ours. Extremist forces were exploiting the Arab Spring. Reactionary forces - with deep reservoirs of political support in the United States - were intent on clinging to power. Bashar al-Assad was going to fight to the death, backed by his Russian and Iranian sponsors. Factions were going to fight it out in the streets of Libya. The Saudis and Emiratis were going to stamp out political dissent in Egypt before it could come to their kingdoms. A Likud prime minister was going to mouth words about peace while building settlements that made peace impossible. Meanwhile, innocent people were going to suffer, some of them were going to be killed, and there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it. Obama had reached that conclusion before I had. History had opened up a doorway in 2011 that, by the middle of 2013, had been slammed shut. There would be more war, more conflict, and more suffering, until - someday - old men would make peace. ~ Ben Rhodes

In the last 48 hours King Abdullah from Saudi Arabia passed away. I have a moral dilemma. The king passed away three or four days ago. Is it too soon to hit on Queen Latifah? ~ David Letterman

We've had Saudis and Jordanians and Pakistanis who have - and Syrians - who have been involved in armed attacks against coalition forces in Iraq. ~ Richard Armitage

The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying. This is America, not Saudi Arabia. ~ Anna Wintour

The argument in this book is that religious doctrines matter and are in need of reform. Non-doctrinal factors - such as the Saudis' use of oil revenues to fund Wahhabism and Western support for the Saudi regime - are important, but religious doctrine is more important. Hard as it may be for many Western academics to believe, when people commit violent acts in the name of religion, they are not trying somehow to dignify their underlying socioeconomic or political grievances. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I was born in 1965. When I grew up in India, there was no expectation that a good Muslim woman wore the headscarf. But what happened when I came here to the U.S. and the emergence of the Saudi and Iranian theologies in the world is that the headscarf became the hijab and the hijab is now the idea that is synonymous with headscarf. ~ Asra Nomani

Israel is the American watchdog in the Middle East, and that's why the Palestinians remain victims of one of the longest military occupations. They don't have oil. If they were the Saudis, they wouldn't be in the position they are now. But they have the power of being able to upset the imperial order in the Middle East. ~ John Pilger

This is a book called Women in the Shade of Islam. It's published by the government of Saudi Arabia. I picked it up in Pakistan, where the Taliban Ladies Auxiliary, and our young wife in California would've picked up an item like this. And it puts out that Salafi-Wahhabi ideology that is ultimately the toxic poison that is crossing all these borders. ~ Dalia Mogahed

Saudi Arabia might proceed toward Sharia slower than Al-Qaeda wants. Al-Qaeda wants pedal-to-the-metal, nothing else in focus, we're heading to Sharia, and the Saudis might not be going there fast enough, so Al-Qaeda hits them. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism, ~ Julian Assange

India is the Saudi Arabia of 21st century. ~ Rahul Gandhi

The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies
easily checkable, blatant lies
and I'm not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men
15 of them are Saudis
and five minutes later the whole country thinks they're from Iraq
how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O. J. Simpson jurors. ~ Fran Lebowitz

Washington still refuses to provide evidence to support the claims in 1990 that a huge Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi border justified war. ~ Noam Chomsky

The bin Laden I met each time was in a simple Saudi white robe, with a simple, cheap kafiya and very cheap plastic sandals. But a videotape released before September 11, which I saw on Lebanese television, had him in a gold embroidered robe. When I saw this, I thought, whoa, has this guy changed? I wouldn't have imagined him ever appearing in such golden robes when I met him. ~ Robert Fisk

Bin Laden was completely protected by the oil companies in this country who told [President] Bush not to go after him because it would piss off the Saudis. ~ Oliver Stone

Saudi Arabia is a puritanical state that claims a monopoly of wisdom and virtue. ~ James Buchan

It's important to reach out to moderate Arab nations, like Jordan and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. ~ George W. Bush

It is in Saudi Arabia's best interest to allow women to fully participate in its society, and this includes the right to vote and run for office. ~ Barbara Boxer

If we had allowed things to drift, everything would have gone from bad to worse. Nasser would have become a kind of Moslem Mussolini, and our friends in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and even Iran would gradually have been brought down. His efforts would have spread westwards, and Libya and North Africa would have been brought under his control. ~ Anthony Eden

The way women today are treated in Saudi Arabia is a direct result of the education our children, boys and girls, receive at school. ~ Basmah Bint Saud

Saudis of all sorts recent having to beg princes for favors to secure services that should be a public right ~ Karen Elliott House

Israelis cannot be blamed for the conflicts and civilians casualties nor do the Palestinians. We can argue endlessly about it, the only one that can be blamed for this lasting battle is the Saudis fueling the conflicts for enduring their supremacy in the Arab world. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

The Society of Muslim Brothers was founded in 1928 by a young schoolteacher named Hasan al-Banna. As a Sunni Islamic revivalist movement, its establishment followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the subsequent end of the caliphate system of government that had united the Muslims for many hundreds of years. Al-Banna, who was just twenty-two years old, believed Islam was not only a religion but a fully comprehensive way of life, based on the tenets of Wahhabism, a strict and repressive form of the religion better known these days as Islamism and espoused by the Saudis, as well as unsavory characters such as Osama bin Laden. ~ Dan Eaton

Doesn't Texas sometimes seem to resemble a country like Saudi Arabia, with its great heat, its oil wealth, its brimming houses of worship, and its weekly executions? ~ Martin Amis

I don't know why it's so hard to believe women. You to go Saudi Arabia and you need two women to testify against a man. Here you need 25. ~ Jay Leno

Fear generates anger, and fear generates violence, and those were part of what built the Saudi state. ~ Robert Lacey

There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia, ~ Newt Gingrich

You know, Saudi Arabia has a lot of poverty also. Regardless about what you hear about the viceroy and people being rich, et cetera. ~ Al-Waleed Bin Talal

The Syrian border town of Qa'im was the main gateway Islamic radicals used to go to Iraq. Syria became the passageway for extremists from Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations to fight a jihad against American forces in Iraq. ~ Richard Engel

I have heard that the Saudi Arabians are paying Greenpeace to campaign against Nuclear Power. It wouldn't surprise me at all. ~ James Lovelock

At the end, the Saudis have agreed to put together a coalition inside of Syria to stabilize that country. ~ John Kasich

Muslims, who have a completely different value system, come to the West, then they should accept that there are certain basic values in the West intrinsic to our culture. Just as I wouldn't suggest that any Westerner walk down the streets of Saudi Arabia in a bikini. ~ John Cleese

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. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I met a lot of great people in Saudi Arabia and I'd like to see them again. And I'd love to spend more time in the desert and in the mountains. I felt really at home there. ~ Dave Eggers

Saudi Arabia will have to decide its own path, and I don't know if it will decide a path like any other nation in the region or if it will design something that is unique to Saudi Arabia. ~ Colin Powell

First of all, I think the Saudis are deeply concerned about the collapse of negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the resumption of conflict. ~ Brent Scowcroft