Afghanistan People Quotes

#1. I remember, on the medevac helicopter, I said to myself, "I am not f - - g dying in Afghanistan." People talk about having flashbacks; I began having flash-forwards. I began thinking of all the things I still wanted to do.

Giles Duley

#2. The average ordinary person, in the worst slums of America, someone who might even hate the law and disagree with the government, they would do something about that [abandoned child]. But in Afghanistan, people hardly have the means to take care of themselves, let alone a random child on the street.

Immortal Technique

#3. We were spending American blood and treasure to liberate the people of Afghanistan from one of the most brutal regimes on the face of the earth. That we would not use that moment to press for women's rights seems to me unthinkable.

Condoleezza Rice

#4. Another part of the global war on terrorism that Canada and the United States are working on together is in helping failed states, states like Afghanistan, where people have no voice.

Paul Cellucci

#5. When I go to Afghanistan, I realize I've been spared, due to a random genetic lottery, by being born to people who had the means to get out. Every time I go to Afghanistan I am haunted by that.

Khaled Hosseini

#6. We want an Afghanistan that is shaped by the dreams of the great Afghan people, not by irrational fears and overreaching ambitions of others.

Narendra Modi

#7. I like to tell people that I have the best job in the media. All I do is hang around with heroes. I do that every week for my 'War Stories' documentary series - and when FOX News wants - I go off and cover the young Americans we send to places like Afghanistan or Iraq.

Oliver North

#8. When you ask people, "What's America's longest war?" they usually answer "Vietnam" or amend that to "Afghanistan," but it's neither. America's longest war is the war on drugs.

Don Winslow

#9. In Afghanistan, life is so fragile; who knows what the next week will bring? That fragility really affects the way you're able to report, and the kind of stories people will tell you.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

#10. The people of Afghanistan will continue to remember his lasting friendship with the people of Afghanistan as well as his unstinting support during the years of jihad against the Soviets.

Hamid Karzai

#11. I disagreed with the conduct of the war, with bombing civilians, categorizing everyone as the enemy or simply as armed men, with the racism and the disregard for those people.

Joe Glenton

#12. Inside the White House there were always extreme amounts of doubt about whether they should be escalating in Afghanistan. In fact, most of the president's advisers said, "This is probably not going to work." A lot of people in the military said, "This is probably not going to work."

Michael Hastings

#13. When you're as small as I am, people don't expect you to be much of an athlete. You either wilt under the weight of low expectations, or you rise above them.

Daniel Rodriguez

#14. Geographically, Afghanistan is a good place for the terrorists, because it's surrounded by mountains, and there are lots of villages inside mountains, so it's easy for them to hide themselves, or to recruit the people. Whatever they want to do they will do.

Najibullah Quraishi

#15. The lucky ones, the ones who weren't here when the place was getting bombed to hell. We're not like these people. We shouldn't pretend we are. The stories these people have to tell, we're not entitled to them.

Khaled Hosseini

#16. When we look around the world today, when we see in Afghanistan that 10 million people have registered to vote in their upcoming elections, including 40 percent of those people are women, that's just unbelievable.

Laura Bush

#17. We are not in Afghanistan because girls were not allowed to go to school, but helping them do so will give the Afghan people hope for a better future.

Bob Ainsworth

#18. If people really saw what was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, then they might be marching in the streets to end wars. But you know, I think that no one ever sees because we're not allowed to see, and we're not allowed to publish what we do see. So it's quite difficult.

Lynsey Addario

#19. General McChrystal had to go. Whatever his virtues as a strategist and commander, the 'Rolling Stone' interview fatally compromised his ability to represent the United States in dealing with allies and to act within the circle of people who must make decisions in Afghanistan.

Jim Talent

#20. I want the American people to understand, we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Stanley A. McChrystal

#21. The events of September 11 and what has happened since have made people understand that even a small, distant and far away country like Afghanistan cannot be left to break up into anarchy and chaos without consequences for the whole world.

Lakhdar Brahimi

#22. Poetry isn't as relevant in the Western world as it is in Afghanistan. And not many people make time for something that doesn't feel relevant.

Eliza Griswold

#23. I'm a lucky boy! I could be holding a gun in Afghanistan. There's boys out there doing what they've got to do, and there's people digging holes, and there's people driving buses. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Ray Winstone

#24. People get upset when Baghdad, the "Cradle of Civilization" is burning, or when the Buddhas in Afghanistan are falling. These are real concerns.

Aleksandra Mir

#25. John Walker, while he was in Afghanistan, told people his goal was to have four wives ... Do we need any further proof that this guy is out of his mind? Four wives? That's how al Qaeda gets you to become a suicide bomber.

David Letterman

#26. Afghanistan has moved forward and Afghanistan will defend itself. And the progress that we have achieved, the Afghan people will not allow it to be put back or reversed.

Hamid Karzai

#27. Do you know that every day, 10 people in Afghanistan are injured by landmines? It will continue for the next 50 years, because the country has the largest number of landmines in the world.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf

#28. I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death.

Greg Mortenson

#29. I am ready to serve the people of Afghanistan, particularly in order to restore peace. I will be ready to assume any duty at the service of my people.

Ahmad

#30. Well, first, the situation in Afghanistan is much better than it was. But there is no comparison between Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq has a bureaucracy, Iraq has wealth. Iraq has an educated class of people who are positioned to come in and take over.

Peter T. King

#31. If low taxes were the way that people like me created wealth, then we'd be starting our companies in the Congo or Somalia or Afghanistan, but we're not. We come to places where there are lots and lots of customers.

Nick Hanauer

#32. As the president of Afghanistan I look at the suffering of our people as a whole.

Hamid Karzai

#33. I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.

Chelsea Manning

#34. It's hard to describe being an expatriate of sorts to people who've never lived overseas, but when you're an American living in a geographically separated region within a country like Korea, you form bonds with people who you'd never associate with stateside.

Tucker Elliot

#35. And the fact of the matter is there were thousands of people that went through those training camps in Afghanistan. We know they are seeking deadlier weapons - chemical, biological and nuclear weapons if they can get it.

Dick Cheney

#36. As we begin to leave Afghanistan, are we fooling ourselves about what we are leaving behind or what we have promised the people of Afghanistan? Especially the women and girls?

Greta Van Susteren

#37. I was in Iraq, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Bahrain. The first year I went pretty much by myself. Then I went with General [Richard] Myers, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The shows and audiences were amazing. You'll never get a better group of people.

Robin Williams

#38. More American young people can tell you where an island that the 'Survivor' TV series came from is located than can identify Afghanistan or Iraq. Ironically a TV show seems more real or at least more meaningful interesting or relevant than reality.

John Fahey

#39. Since 2001, people have been scared. There's been some really scary stuff that's been happening - 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, anthrax letters, D.C. sniper, global warming, global financial meltdown, bird flu, swine flu, SARS. I think people really feel like the system's breaking down.

Max Brooks

#40. We as the Afghan people and government are willing to help Pakistan work for peace in Afghanistan and work for peace in Pakistan, together.

Hamid Karzai

#41. I supported the war in Afghanistan because 3000 of our people were murdered and I thought we had a right to defend the people of the United States.

Howard Dean

#42. People say the war in Iraq is a bad war, and the war in Afghanistan is a good war, but what's the difference between them? Democratic people around the world cannot accept that this is a good war. This is just endless war.

Malalai Joya

#43. I also know that there are a lot of people around the United States who want my husband to win and who are for him and who support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I feel good about those people, too.

Laura Bush

#44. Ironically, many of these people, including Osama bin Laden and the mujahedeen, were, in fact, nourished by the United States in the early eighties in its efforts to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

Edward Said

#45. It is very clear that the people in Afghanistan do not want the Taliban back.

Hillary Clinton

#46. Some people will talk about how Afghanistan has improved, but they're really just talking about the cities. In the countryside where the war has been fought, it's really not that much better than it was in 2001.

Anand Gopal

#47. We haven't been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure. How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that, rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?

Patty Murray

#48. Military strikes on Afghanistan will not prevent something this terrible from happening again, for the simple reason that bombs will not deter people who are unafraid of death and desire martyrdom.

Jemima Khan

#49. The people who illegally cross into the country are from countries that have very close ties to al Qaeda, whether it's Yemen or Afghanistan, Pakistan, China. It is an absolute national disgrace.

Rick Perry

#50. The people who died in the Twin Towers in that terrible crime mattered. The people who were bombed to death in dusty villages in Afghanistan didn't matter, even though it now seems that their numbers were greater. The people who will die in Iraq don't matter.

John Pilger

#51. They're criminals, they brutalized Afghanistan, they killed our people, they destroyed our land.

Hamid Karzai

#52. The most successful cultural diplomacy strategy integrates people-to-people or arts/culture/media-to-people interactions into the basic business of diplomacy. The programs in Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iran all contribute to core goals of U.S. policy in those countries.

Cynthia P. Schneider

#53. Afghans think the burqa is a permanent part of culture. But, if you bring it to Europe, how would people react? Afghanistan doesn't want to change its culture, but it can change, all the time. So why are Afghans giving so much value to it? The burqa is not natural. It's not human nature.

Malina Suliman

#54. Reacher said, "Our nearest tanks are a thousand miles from Yemen or Afghanistan, and they take weeks and weeks and thousands of people to move. It would be easier to bring Yemen or Afghanistan to them. Also faster and less obtrusive.

Lee Child

#55. 'Shortly Thereafter' chronicles all the aspects of an Afghanistan deployment, from the terrors of the unknown that await before leaving, to the perverse thrills and adrenaline rushes found in combat, to the return home to a land and a people now more foreign than the war itself was.

Matt Gallagher

#56. There are more good people than bad people, and overall there's more that's good in the world than there is that's bad. We just need to hear about it, we just need to see it.

Tucker Elliot

#57. I think the central mission in Afghanistan right now is to protect the people, certainly, and that would be inclusive of everybody, and that in a, in an insurgency and a counterinsurgency, that's really the center of gravity.

Michael Mullen

#58. I vowed to our countrymen that I would do everything I could to protect the American people. That's why I said to Afghanistan: If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist.

George W. Bush

#59. People who need therapy are in Afghanistan. They've seen horrible human cruelty and degradation, but they don't have time or the money for therapy.

David Chase

#60. Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it's very, very conservative, very tribal - almost medieval.

Khaled Hosseini

#61. Once the fire from the retaliatory strike dies down, the American people are going to find out that it is the Clinton Administration's wrongheaded policies that resulted in the creation of this terrorist haven in Afghanistan in the first place.

Dana Rohrabacher

#62. You know, I wish the world well. I want Iraq to have democracy and the Haitians to have democracy. I want the people of Afghanistan to thrive. Lord knows, we spend enough money there to help them. What about people at home? Isn't that our first responsibility?

Barbara Boxer

#63. I am ready to sacrifice everything in completing the unfinished agenda of our noble jihad ... until there is no bloodshed in Afghanistan and Islam becomes a way of life for our people.

Mohammed Omar

#64. The existence of the Taliban, in my view, is a tragedy for Afghanistan. We as Americans need to understand our role in helping bring that tragedy about. So I think it's important to look at the stories about why these people are fighting.

Anand Gopal

#65. I think Americans understand that in Afghanistan, unlike in Iraq and Vietnam, we are fighting an enemy allied with the people who attacked us on 9/11.

Richard Holbrooke

#66. People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons.

William J. Clinton

#67. The most interesting place by far was Afghanistan. Just because it is a place that I cannot see myself living. The hardness of the people and the history of the country is just so completely intense.

Henry Rollins

#68. Afghanistan is a country in need. Afghanistan needs to protect itself in the region; Afghanistan needs to secure itself within the country. Afghanistan needs to develop its forces, and Afghanistan needs to provide stability to the people.

Hamid Karzai

#69. I was thinking about Afghanistan's future, Afghanistan's next generation, what we have next. These children who learn how to kill people, how to do jihad, how to behead, how to fire, this would be Afghanistan.

Najibullah Quraishi

#70. Since the attack on the United States on September 11 2001, and the US retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq, there must be few people who have not felt a twinge of nostalgia for the cold war.

James Buchan

#71. If American forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban is going to do what to America? Don't say you're worried about what they will do to the Afghan people. If that was America's concern, America's operational presence there would be much different.

Henry Rollins

#72. In the British embassy in Afghanistan in 2008, an embassy of 350 people, there were only three people who could speak Dari, the main language of Afghanistan, at a decent level. And there was not a single Pashto speaker.

Rory Stewart

#73. Photography of any living being, according to Taliban rule, was illegal. So when I went to Afghanistan, immediately I was worried about photographing people. But it was what I wanted: to show what life was like under the Taliban, specifically for women.

Lynsey Addario

#74. People in Afghanistan want peace, including the Taliban. They're also people like we all are. They have families, they have relatives, they have children, they are suffering a tough time.

Hamid Karzai

#75. Several million people inside and outside Afghanistan are destitute and desperately in need of help.

Lakhdar Brahimi

#76. People feel repressed by their own governments; they feel unfairly treated by the outside world; they wake up in the morning, and who do they see - they see people being shot and killed: all Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur.

Mohamed ElBaradei

#77. One of the problems of not allowing the American people to read what bin Laden has said is that in October 2001 just after the war began in Afghanistan, he gave a speech that had two parts to it.

Michael Scheuer

#78. Now, al Qaeda's on the run. Afghanistan is no longer a base of operations. The Afghan government is a friendly government that is trying to bring democracy to its people.

Condoleezza Rice

#79. We all lose people. We all have to live in the aftermath. It's how we move forward that counts, but sometimes we are tethered to something in our past that won't let us move forward.

Tucker Elliot

#80. I remind you again we had those elections [in Afghanistan and Iraq] because we had boots on the ground and we had people that could help people, and we had people on the ground that could get into somebody's face when they had to, and do whatever was required.

Peter Schoomaker

#81. The rapid proliferation of cell phones in Afghanistan proves that anything that adds value to people's lives spreads like brushfire - and commerce is certainly a force that could add value for Afghanis.

Iqbal Quadir

#82. Look at Iraq; look at Afghanistan, where at great personal physical risk people have gone to the polls and have rejected the appeal from Bin Laden and his allies to stay at home.

Gijs De Vries

#83. We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened.

Liam Fox

#84. If Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything in recent history, it is the unpredictability of war and that these things are easier to get into than to get out of, and, frankly, the facile way in which too many people talk about, 'Well, let's just go attack them.'

Robert M. Gates