"As you travel through the Middle East..." - Quote by Barack Obama
As you travel through the Middle East what keeps on striking home to me is how similar everyone is, and yet the degree to which we can find differences to fight wars over. It requires a great deal of empathy, I think, between various sides to overcome this history and live in peace.
More by Barack Obama
“And I want to work with this Congress, to make sure Americans already burdened with student loans can reduce their monthly payments, so that student debt doesn't derail anyone's dreams.”
“My liberty depends on you being free, too.”
“If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”
More on Peace
“History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.”
“We cannot hope to die peacefully if our lives have been full of violence, or if our minds have mostly been agitated by emotions like anger, attachment, or fear. So if we wish to die well, we must learn how to live well: Hoping for a peaceful death, we must cultivate peace in our mind, and in our way of life.”
“Every victory accomplished with weapons is a funeral that should be mourned.”
More on Middle East
“What we've seen at least since 1979 is Iran making constant, calculated decisions that allow it to preserve the regime, to expand their influence where they can, to be opportunistic, to create what they view as hedges against potential Israeli attack in the form of Hezbollah and other proxies in the region.”
“The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.”
“From the standpoint of a Middle Eastern citizen, Americans look like a bully forcing our way of life on the Islamic way of life. The notion of purity is very important in Islam, and a lot of the negative warlike actions taken against us have to do with our physical presence in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden was trying to get the American, or protesting the American military presence in Saudi Arabia. It's not surprising that our strong presence in Iraq has produced a wave of resistance anger, extreme anger in some cases, and a permissive atmosphere that allows these people to go undetected.”