Quote

To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence.

Tariq Ali

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tariq Ali
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: October 21
Film Director
Historian
Journalist
Novelist
Peace Activist
Politician
Screenwriter
Writer
Mean
Single
Oppression
Fanatical
Violence
Equally
Oppressive
Democracy
Tyranny
Fanaticism
Bring
Meaningful
Ruthless
Causes
Using
Cycle
Justice
Cause
Minded
Fighting
Becoming
Cycles
Prolong
Means
Fight
Combat
Tyrannical

More quotes by Tariq Ali

Image
We have populations now in the West with a very short memory span. One reason for this short memory span is that television over the last fifteen years has seen a big decline in the coverage of the rest of the world.
Tariq Ali
Image
The implication strongly is that Osama bin Laden is a Hitler, even though he has no state power at all. It's just grotesque if you seriously think about it.
Tariq Ali
Image
History, when they do it, is ancient history, and they sensationalize even that. Contemporary history is virtually ignored on television.
Tariq Ali
Image
Journalists go to press briefings at the Ministry of Defense in London or the Pentagon in Washington, and no critical questions are posed at all. It's just a news-gathering operation, and the fact that the news is being given by governments who are waging war doesn't seem to worry many journalists too much.
Tariq Ali
Image
I think the United States and its British attack dog are not taken seriously anywhere in the world and can play no role in helping a political solution.
Tariq Ali
Image
One cannot discuss Europe without understanding US imperial hegemony, both globally and certainly in Europe as it stands.
Tariq Ali
Image
The European Union is effectively a union dominated by the German political and economic elite. Its main function is to serve as a nucleus for financial capitalism and to ease the road for that capitalism. The other functions just irritate everyone: it's undemocratic decisions are not made by parliament the European Parliament is not sovereign.
Tariq Ali
Image
The European Union has lost virtually all of its credibility amongst large swaths of the European population.
Tariq Ali
Image
People are increasingly beginning to feel that democracy itself is being destroyed by this latest phase of globalization and that politics doesn't matter because it changes nothing.
Tariq Ali
Image
What we are seeing in Turkey is a non-uniformed authoritarian regime led by a politician, Tayyip Erdogan, who has allowed power to go to his head and is behaving more and more like a despot. Sooner or later this will provoke political uprisings throughout the country as happened after Gezi.
Tariq Ali
Image
I think to compare Germany to the Third Reich is utterly ludicrous.
Tariq Ali
Image
As for ISIS, we know where they come from. We know who has used them in the past. We know their sectarianism leads to killings. Here the Turkish state, like its NATO bosses, has helped to create a monster that it now claims to oppose.
Tariq Ali
Image
Dear old al-Maarri was a great skeptic poet. He wrote a parody of the Koran, and his friends would tease him and say, al-Maarri, but no one says your Koran. And he said, Yes, but give me time. Give me time. If people recite it for twenty years it will become as popular as the other one.
Tariq Ali
Image
The United States is now The Empire. There isn't an empire there's The Empire, and that empire is the United States.
Tariq Ali
Image
Effectively, the EU is a very powerful bureaucracy, dominated now by the German elite, which is backed by the rest of the European Union members.
Tariq Ali
Image
I've called David Cameron worse things than joker....and a former Prime Minister Tony Blair is widely referred to as a war criminal.
Tariq Ali
Image
In the West, since the collapse of communism and the fall of the Soviet Union, the one discipline both the official and unofficial cultures have united in casting aside has been history.
Tariq Ali
Image
The war in Afghanistan, the first war of the twenty-first century, shows the United States doing what it wants to do, not caring about who it antagonizes, not caring about the effects on neighboring regions.
Tariq Ali
Image
Terror breeds terror. I am completely opposed to both state terror and those who respond in a similar way. There is no justification for any group that associates itself with the Left to kill innocents and encourage suicide bombings.
Tariq Ali
Image
Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.
Tariq Ali