Algeria Quotes

If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions. (Abba Eban)

I can say now: all the combatants who participated in the fight for freedom in South America came to Algeria; it's from there that all those who fought left. We trained them, we arranged for the weapons to reach them, we created networks.

Ahmed Ben Bella

The French colonisation of Algeria lasted a long time: 132 years.

Ahmed Ben Bella

The liberation movement which I led in Algeria, the organization that I created to fight the French army, was at first a small movement of nothing at all. We were but some tens of people throughout Algeria, a territory that is five times the size of France.

Ahmed Ben Bella

Yes, I am Algerian of Moroccan origin through my parents, but all my life is Algeria. I was born there.

Ahmed Ben Bella

Algeria was therefore only the beginning of something that was in development: this is why I say that it's the global capitalist system that finally reacted against us.

Ahmed Ben Bella

Algeria is not breaking up.

Ahmed Ben Bella

I am the son of poor peasants who came at a very young age to live in Algeria. I only recently saw the place where they were born, near the city of Marrakech.

Ahmed Ben Bella

Do not forget that the Arab countries, starting with Algeria and Egypt, are the ones that have paid the heaviest toll because of Islamic terror.

Omar Bongo

The Times and the Guardian accuse us of operating a police-state. The BBC Persian programme has made similair allegations, saying that countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia should be denied access to Western military technology. What are the bloody fools on about? Do they seriously regard Iraq, or Algeria, or Libya as liberal regimes?

Muhammad Reza Pahlavi

For a boy who'd grown up on stories of legionnaires, it was easy to feel the thick spirit that filled this small outpost, home to the parachute battalion that had this corner of the fight. I had come to thank them for their service and their courage. Talking to young soldiers, some already seasoned warriors, who had purposely selected a life of expeditionary service, I thought of their predecessors in Indochina and Algeria. I looked over at two of my aides, one a German officer, another an Afghan. How different wars could be, I thought, but the soldiers seemed the same. (Stanley A. McChrystal)

I'm struggling with flowering trees [in Spring 1881, shortly after his Algeria trip] and with women and children. I keep feeling regretful, all the same – I think of all the trouble I have given you for nothing, and I wonder how long you will put up with my womanish whims; and through all I keep seeing those pretty English girls [Duret invited him to visit England]. What a misfortune, always to be so undecided! But it's at the root of my character, and I'm too old to change.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

One day, while I was painting a landscape in the neighbourhood of Algiers [March 1881] I saw a man approaching who seemed to be dressed in purple and cloth-of-gold... When the traveler reached me, my illusion vanished; my emir was nothing but a flea-bitten beggar. The sun, the divine sun had enriched him with its light... It's always the same in Algeria. The magic of the sun transmutes the palm-trees into gold, the water seems full of diamonds and men become the Kings from the East.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

[T]he nature of the new world system was not so different from the old. It was for the moment more stable, but a reasonable forecast would be that Africa in particular had a century of border wars ahead of it. On the other hand, such was the power of the anticolonial idea that great powers from outside a region had relatively little influence unless they were prepared to use force. China altogether backed Fretilin in Timor, and lost. In Spanish Sahara, Russia just as completely backed Algeria, and its front, known as Polisario, and lost. In both instances the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with not inconsiderable success.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Arab-led Islamic fundamentalism destabilizes nations from Algeria to the Philippines.

P. J. O'Rourke

The work which is done here and the help which is extended to our brothers are our aims. Take our sister Algeria which is struggling against oppressive forces and making best efforts for liberation and independence. We extended our aid to Algeria with full sincerity and faith in justice. We have pledged to continue our help to Algeria until Algeria is liberated.

Abd al-Karim Qasim

Of course, the kind of support that Cuba could give us was very limited when it came to building up our army, since they didn't manufacture armaments in the quantities that we required. So we turned to Algeria and the Soviet Union for support.

Daniel Ortega

In Algeria, I had begun to get into literature and philosophy. I dreamed of writing-and already models were instructing the dream, a certain language governed it.

Jacques Derrida

In all these countries, (Özal swept his hand across the map from Afghanistan to Algeria) too many people have too little hope.

Turgut Özal

Even when Muslims do something intolerable, Europeans have to tolerate it in atonement of past colonial and imperialist misdeeds. Victimhood is an inexhaustible capital that Muslims in Europe could dig into for generations. The fact that the killers of Charlie Hebdo staff had never even visited Algeria did not deprive them of their ancestral capital of victimhood because of French colonial presence there decades before the two killers were born in Paris. Even acts that are clearly not worthy of respect, such as female genital mutilation, must be respected in the name of "cultural otherness.”.

Amir Taheri

The result is that you are now experiencing what we experienced in the war in Algeria: The Israeli government says that it is a victim of terrorist activity, but this activity is less visible than the military strikes. (Jean-Marie Le Pen)

Just incredible! Look at Hope Solo celebrate! There is an American party going on, all around the terraces! Surely the whistle's going to go any second, and it will be a penalty shootout. Abby Wambach in the one hundred and twenty-second minute. Well that does match the drama of the men's World Cup last year, and the Landon Donovan goal which saved the USA against Algeria, doesn't it? Well, well, well! And the goal was scored in the time added on for the largely bogus injury, we think, to Érika. Is there some kind of poetic justice in that? It's not finished yet, though. Still the referee plays on, and here's Marta again! Solo beats it away; it will be a corner. How much more of this can there possibly be? It is over! It will be a penalty shoot-out! An incredible finish, one of the great climaxes to any World Cup match! Brazil are denied at the death! A ten-woman USA save it! Wow, we need to get our breath back. So let's go back to Bob Ley for a moment.

Ian Darke