Lakhdar Brahimi Quotes
Iraq is a country that has been invaded. It's not a failing state that you want to help. It's a country that was functioning good or bad, with a horrible dictator, but you have invaded.

Quotes to Explore
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The reason for not getting married was that I just didn't have a partner to get married to. Climbing mountains was more attractive to me than marriage, or other fun things like that.
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Education - much like law or medicine - should be a profession governed by professionals. Unfortunately, too many policies, even those that are well-intentioned, come from the top, leaving out those closest to the classroom, who have the greatest insight into how to provide a high-quality education for all students.
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Defendants are being evaluated based on numerical grid without any aggravating circumstances being considered. The effect has been to transfer the disparity from the judge to the prosecutor allowing for a great deal of leeway on indictments.
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We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
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My dad is a Chatty Cathy, the social butterfly; friendly; knows everybody in the whole world by six degrees; tells me that every performance is the greatest he's ever seen, every new outfit is the coolest. Constant cheerleader.
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I don't believe in writer's block.
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Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.
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I thought I had the rights to The Lord of the Rings. I don't know how Jackson ended up with the rights.
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In my real movie-going days, which were the thirties, you didn't stand in line. You strolled down the street and sallied into the theater at any hour of the day or night.
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I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else.
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I don't think it's possible to separate out the strands of a writer's history, circumstances, life events, and that writer's themes.
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I just kind of assumed that you do a movie and then you leave and you hop onto the next thing. I never thought that people are actually buddies.
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The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.
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As long I still have a breath left in me I will dedicate myself fully to China's reform.
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Overpaying the banks for their toxic assets could contribute capital, but that may not be politically feasible or attractive.
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I like new challenges and new experiences.
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People don't hear me talk. They don't expect me to.
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I don't think that genius goes hand in hand with being socially inept or being a sociopath or being a misanthrope, but I do think that it is a mind that can think so differently - so beyond how one is supposed to think.
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The fact that President-elect Kennedy would be the first Catholic president did not sit well with many Americans. There was a fear that, as president, Kennedy's decisions would be based on his religion and dictated by the pope.
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When I'm dead I don't want a funeral. I want people to remember me alive.
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Emerald slopes became so tall they touched the clouds, and showers painted diamond waterfalls that sluiced down cliff sides.
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When people begin anticipating inflation, it doesn't do you any good anymore, because any benefit of inflation comes from the fact that you do better than you thought you were going to do.
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People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech. When I started writing, I thought [the language] was telling the story of this country: old people in a young nation, very religious, very conservative, very tight-assed, but also very anarchistic, very open-minded. It's all in the language, and that's one thing that doesn't translate.
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Iraq is a country that has been invaded. It's not a failing state that you want to help. It's a country that was functioning good or bad, with a horrible dictator, but you have invaded.