Tariq Ali Quotes
-
Those who really value Ukrainian sovereignty should opt for real independence and a positive neutrality: neither a plaything of the West nor Moscow.
-
The patchwork political landscape of the Arab world - the client monarchies, degenerated nationalist dictatorships, and the imperial petrol stations known as the Gulf states - was the outcome of an intensive experience of Anglo-French colonialism.
-
We were constantly appealing for funds from readers when I edited 'The Black Dwarf' in 1968-69.
-
Scandinavia was awash with Maoism in the '70s. Sweden had Maoist groups with a combined membership and periphery of several thousand members, but it was Norway where Maoism became a genuine popular force and hegemonic in the culture.
-
The weakness in traditional Scottish nationalism lay in its own inability to grasp that identity could not be the only factor in the march to independence.
-
An act of unilateral nuclear disarmament by a European power would have a much more lasting impact than all the sanctions under consideration. Sanctions, as we know from the example of Iraq, always affect the least powerful citizens the most.
-
The only decent daily paper of record in France is the online 'Mediapart,' which exposes graft and corruption in high places and is feared by the establishment.
-
Independence is the only way Scotland can realise its full political and cultural potential in the 21st century.
-
Ralph Miliband was a socialist intellectual of great integrity. He belonged to a generation of socialists formed by the Russian revolution and the Second World War, a generation that dominated left-wing politics for almost a century.
-
Exploiters and manipulators have always used religion self-righteously to further their own selfish ends.
-
Young women and men who joined the far-left groups did so for the best of reasons. They wanted to change the world. Many fought against the stifling atmosphere in many groups.
-
The genealogy of fictional characters can become an obsession, like train-spotting, and should be firmly resisted.
-
It is as difficult to define or classify Islamic cinema as it would be a Christian, Jewish or Buddhist one.
-
As long as the Pentagon bankrolls the Pakistan army to fight its wars, and NATO troops remain in Afghanistan, there will be quarrels, charges of infidelity, a reduction in the household allowance, perhaps a separation - but a divorce? Never.
-
For all their incoherence and senseless rage, their message is attractive to those layers of the population who yearn for some order in their lives. If the fanatics promise to feed them and educate their children they are prepared to forgo the delights of CNN and BBC World.
-
The origins of Indian classical music, not unlike their western counterparts, lie in the Vedas, the ancient Hindu scriptures of 2,000 years ago.
-
There are, of course, deeply sincere people of religion in different parts of the world who genuinely fight on the side of the poor, but they are usually in conflict with organised religion themselves.
-
The Pakistan Cricket Board is a long-standing joke, its chairmen replaced with every change of government.
-
In times of crisis, the incumbent suffers. And the bigger the crisis, the greater the punishment inflicted on those in power unless they do something that makes a change.
-
The human voice deployed to recite the Vedas and later aid the temple dancers was paramount before any instruments emerged.
-
A storm swept the world in 1968. It started in Vietnam, then blew across Asia, crossing the sea and the mountains to Europe and beyond. A brutal war waged by the U.S. against a poor southeast Asian country was seen every night on television.
-
For India, the links with the United States/Israel are the centrepiece of its foreign policy.
-
In some ways, the '60s were a reaction to the '50s and the intensity of the Cold War.
-
When Pakistan was carved out of India's rib in 1947, it was assumed by some that Bollywood's Muslim stars would defect to the new state and thus boost the Lahore film industry. But Lollywood did not happen.