“The Chinese are telling the Pentagon that they don’t own space.” Michael Krepon, of the Henry L. Stimson Center, on a Chinese antisatellite military test in which a ground-based missile shot down an aging satellite more than 800 kilometers into space. The test was condemned by the United States.
“Such statements give moral boosts to the terrorists.” Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, on statements by the Bush administration describing the Iraqi government as being “on borrowed time”
“Just because Hitler misused the symbol, abused it and used it to propagate a reign of terror and racism and discrimination does not mean that its peaceful use should be banned.” Ramesh Kallidai, of the Hindu Forum of Britain, on a proposed EU ban on the swastika, which was used by Hindus for 5,000 years as a symbol of peace
title: “International Perspectives” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-20” author: “Stephanie Longway”
“The grief is immeasurable; there are not enough words of comfort. My heart hurts, but yours hurt even more.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, under fire for his handling of the Kursk submarine disaster that killed 118 sailors, attempting to comfort angry relatives of the deceased
“We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile.” George W. Bush, during a stump speech in Iowa
“I’m tempted to change my opinion of the polls.” Al Gore, on the postconvention bounce that now shows him slightly ahead of Bush
“Let’s hope Oswiecim will not be a parody of a peace town for Jews.” Sebastian Lawczys, a tour guide at the Auschwitz museum, on news that the Polish town of Oswiecim–where GermanNazis built their death camp–plans to begin attracting tourists with a visitors center and disco
“I can’t wait to see my dad and hug him. I think it just means that the government’s case is crumbling.” Alberta Lee, daughter of accused spy Wen Ho Lee, on a judge’s decision to set the nuclear scientist free on $1 million bail
“We have met the neighborhood drug pusher and he is us.” Dr. Michael S. Rosenthal, of America’s Phoenix House treatment centers, on a study of 600 people in drug-treatment programs, revealing that76 percent of those surveyed had smoked marijuana with their parents
“Why should we kill one of our daughters to enable the other one to survive?” Parents of conjoined twins born in Manchester, England,on a court ruling that their twin girls must be separated, or they would both die within months
“It was just total terror.” Journalist David Barrie, one of the four men arrested on charges of espionage while filming a documentary for Britain’s Channel Four in Liberia, sparking angry protests from the international community and press-freedom groups.The four were released last Friday.
“To keep a figure like that in jail for a long period of time could elevate him to martyr status, which is also not in the interests of anybody.” John Killian, leader of the conservative New National Party in Gauteng province, South Africa, on the release of neo-Nazi leader Eugene Terre Blanche from prison last week, six months before his one-year term for assaulting a black gas station attendant was to end
“Dan walked into the room and we all knew we had found Harry.” Director Chris Columbus, on the casting of little-known British actor Daniel Radcliffe, 11, in the coveted title role of the first Harry Potter film
title: “International Perspectives” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-13” author: “Amy Sartin”
“I will govern with no personality cult and without the assumption that the country is my fiefdom.” Mexico’s newly inaugurated President Vicente Fox
“For despite the heroic efforts of so many, we are not winning the war against AIDS, we are losing it.” U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, sending a global message of warning on World AIDS Day last Friday
“Give a child love, laughter and peace, not AIDS.” Former SouthAfrican president Nelson Mandela, speaking out on the disease that is devastating his nation
“A macho man? Moi?” Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for the Environment John Prescott, responding to being labeled an “inveterate macho man” after blaming the collapse of the United Nations summit on climate change on French Environment Minister Dominique Voynet
“Is it the cows, or have we gone mad?” Pietro Stecchiotti, an Italian butcher, on the recent BSE crisis, which has endangered his livelihood
“It is not just a fashion statement, and we are not planning to make our heavenly protection into a cult.” Russian tax-policespokesman Yury Tretyakov, on the Russian Orthodox Church’s decision to name the apostle Matthew patron saint of the country’s tax police
“Doctors should not be treated as criminals.” Dutch Health Minister Els Borst, speaking on the day the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia
“The same line of reasoning is being used as in Germany in 1935.” Bert Dorenbos of the Scream for Life organization, one of many groups to condemn the euthanasia decision
“This is boring!… Now I know what people went through when… my Bronco was going up the freeway.” O. J. Simpson, on the Ryder truck that was nationally televised as it carried ballots to Tallahassee, Florida
“Tell me, what do you eat on Thanksgiving?” Host Jerry Springer to Miss Turkey during the 50th annual Miss World contest. Miss India, 18-year-old student Priyanka Chopra, took home the crown.
title: “International Perspectives” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-12” author: “Howard Miller”
“Barak lost because the situation is impossible. We reached the stage where we could virtually touch peace and at the same time a Jew was being murdered every day.” Yael Dayan, a Labor Party lawmaker
“I have to confess, it was hard for me to concentrate in the conversation with Condoleezza Rice because she has very nice legs.” Ariel Sharon, on his meeting last summer with the newly named U.S. national-security adviser
“We all need peace. Optimism is the last thing you lose.” Colombian rebel chief Manuel Marulanda, before his meeting with President Andres Pastrana to begin talks on the country’s raging war
“I have been a victim of a corrupt government.” Robert Pickett, the man who allegedly fired shots outside the White House, in a letter to the Internal Revenue Service. Police have suggested the man was planning to commit suicide–either by shooting himself or forcing the officers to open fire.
“A warning light is flashing on the dashboard of our economy, and we just can’t drive on and hope for the best.” President George W. Bush, sending Congress his plan for $1.6 trillion in tax cuts
“I am actually for the first time looking forward to a litigation.” O.J. Simpson, surrendering to authorities on charges stemming from a December “road rage” incident. He insists the altercation is being “blown out of proportion.”
“We do all kinds of wonderful things together.” Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, on life with his seven blond girlfriends
“Everything about it seems sleazy.” Connecticut Rep. Christopher Shays, during congressional hearings on Bill Clinton’s presidential pardon of fugitive Marc Rich
“All of it was there, to the penny.” FBI agent Bob Hawk, on a man who returned $640,000 several days after it fell off an armored truck
“Whether someone is a slut is a moral judgment. It is not the court’s role to rule on that.” Robert Glazier, attorney for the House of God, on a Florida appeals court ruling that the woman whose pastor called her a slut could not sue the church
“I was alone with more than 200 furious cattle dealers.” Activist Frincis Querinjean, on being stripped to his underwear by angry cattle traders after filming them for a French animal-rights group
“Things have a natural life, and in our view it has run a natural life.” Brian Harris, chief executive of “Baywatch” producer Pearson Television North America, on the end of the global hit TV show
title: “International Perspectives” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-25” author: “Pauline Sanchez”
title: “International Perspectives” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-08” author: “Arnold Olmstead”
Former British prime minister John Major, on Saddam Hussein’s likely fate after an allied attack on Iraq “I didn’t compare the persons Bush and Hitler, but their methods.”
Herta Daubler-Gmelin, 59, member of the Social Democratic Party in Germany, after causing a transatlantic flap with comments during an election rally “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones.”
Line from a Bush-administration document on shifting military strategy toward pre-emptive action “There always has to be a difference between tolerance and stupidity.”
Conservative candidate Edmund Stoiber, pledging himself to the deportation of 4,000 alleged Islamist militants in Germany “This is one suicide for every day of the century, or more appropriately, two for every day that the conservatives ruled.” Authors of a paper correlating suicide rates in Britain to the election of conservative governments “Why? I can think of a million reasons.”
Tiger Woods, on playing to win $1 million at an AmEx tourney or for prestige at the Ryder Cup “They think I’m insane; maybe I am.”
Australian actor Mel Gibson on his new film “Passion,” which he is directing in Rome. The plot chronicles the last hours of Christ’s life and is filmed entirely in Latin and Aramaic, without subtitles. “This is my first time in court. I’m sure it will work out just fine.”
Pro wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, on his upcoming assault trial, where he will face charges for allegedly beating his wife at their Texas home in June “These sheep are, in effect, pumping iron without lifting weights.”
Randy Jirlte, Duke University radiation oncologist, on the effect of a newly discovered gene that gives sheep muscular rear ends “We [are] still searching for that person with whom we want to spend the rest of our lives–just ask Bridget Jones.”
David Willetts, Tory spokesman, on putting marriage at the heart of tackling the breakdown of society “I needed to step off the one-book-a-year treadmill.”
“Harry Potter” author J. K. Rowling, on the delay of the fifth book in the series
title: “International Perspectives” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “Eric Schiller”
Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, after announcing he would run for governor of California in the upcoming recall election
“We’re starving. We’re eating food that humans should not be eating.”
Monrovia resident Athanasius Carr, on the diet of some Liberians who have resorted to eating leaves and swamp snails
“That view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in Baghdad in 2003.”
U.S. national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, on the argument that Iraqis are not culturally ready for freedom, just as blacks in the American South supposedly were not ready for equal rights in the ’60s
“I don’t think there is even a sanatorium in Russia that would compare to this.”
Chechen Ayrat Vakhitov, a released Guantanamo Bay detainee, comparing the often decried conditions there with worse ones in Russia
“Not only is it illegal, not only is it a pirate copy, it’s a really bad translation.”
Eduardo Castillo, president of a Chilean book company, on bootleg copies of J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” being circulated on the streets of Chile
“We want to tell the machines, ‘Thank you very much for all your hard work’.”
Hitoshi Osawa, president of the leading Japanese manufacturer of pachinko machines, on the pinball game’s tremendous popularity
“Split pants? That’s so old-fashioned! It’s not hygienic. It’s bad for the environment. Only poor people who live on farms wear them.”
Annie Cao, who was shopping with her 2-year-old daughter at a Shanghai department store, on the holed baby pants that are being increasingly replaced by diapers
title: “International Perspectives” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-03” author: “Brian Potts”
Carolyn Parrish, a member of Parliament from Canada’s ruling Liberal Party, leaving an antiwar conference on Iraq
“I wake with the sun. And if you’re two minutes late to the office, and everybody else is, too, there’s no problem.”
Shipping-company employee Rene Osurna, on the slowing down of Venezuela’s clocks due to power shortages. The country’s clocks have lost an accumulated 14 hours and 36 minutes over the past year.
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, clarifying U.S. policy on the war on terror at a Pentagon briefing
“I’m a bit past my prime. It’s too high tech today. I’m used to rifles and machine guns, not missiles.”
British pensioner Joe Steer, 80, on being mistakenly activated for military duty in the event of a war with Iraq
“If someone takes one bullet out of the chamber of a gun while they have six other bullets in the gun, they haven’t disarmed.”
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, on Iraq’s agreeing to destroy its Al Samoud 2 missiles, as demanded by U.N. weapons inspectors
“If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the populace is bliss.”
Doctoral fellow Geoffrey Sommer, recommending to the American Association for the Advancement of Science that the public should not be informed in the event of a killer asteroid
title: “International Perspectives” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-26” author: “Maria Quilty”
“At dawn prayers… the criminal, reckless little Bush and his aides committed this crime which he was threatening to commit against Iraq and humanity.” Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, avowing to his people that he would overthrow President Bush
“I am doing this out of a responsibility to history. What distinguishes us from animals is our memory. Humanity cannot forget its history.” Holocaust survivor Kurt Werner Schaechter, on suing France’s national railroad company for its role in transporting Jews to concentration camps during World War II. Schaechter is seeking ¤1 in damages.
“The last thing Ted needs these days is a licking from me.” Rupert Murdoch, responding to a challenge to a fistfight from fellow media mogul Ted Turner
“That’s a weapon of mass destruction right there.” Event moderator Dave Moody, on a shoe that was entered by the crew of the USS Montpelier submarine in the annual Rotten Sneaker Contest held in Vermont. It arrived double-bagged from an undisclosed location in the Persian Gulf and reeked of fish.
“I didn’t have the feeling of sitting across from an uncultured villain of history. My impression is that we had a pleasant, cultivated, comprehensive talk.” Austrian right-winger Jorg Haider, recounting his meeting with Saddam Hussein last year
“We just decided to act in a peaceful way, following a one and only aim: peace around the world.” A French Web site, bretzelforbush.com, which advocates sending pretzels to President Bush, who fainted in January 2002 after choking on the snack
title: “International Perspectives” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-14” author: “William Woolfolk”
“[He] revived the economics of liberty when it had been all but forgotten.” Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, mourning the death of free-market economist Milton Friedman, who coined the phrase “There is no such thing as a free lunch”
“The fact that you have the largest polluter in the world not constructively engaging in real efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions makes it more challenging for everyone else.” Jennifer Morgan, who directs climate programs for a London environmental group, speaking about the United States after a climate-change meeting in Nairobi ended without a timetable for reducing emissions
“You’re like a young tiger.” President George W. Bush, praising Vietnam’s President Nguyen Minh Triet for his country’s economic vibrancy
“[The government] did not cave in to the mullahs.” Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf, after his government amended a law that had made it legal to prosecute rape victims for adultery
