Mohammed Reza Pahlavi Quotes

I want the standard of living in Iran in ten years' time to be exactly on a level with that in Europe today. In twenty years' time we shall be ahead of the United States.

My main mistake was to have made an ancient people advance by forced marches toward independence, health, culture, affluence, comfort.

To be first in the Middle East is not enough. We must raise ourselves to the level of a great world power.

Let the dog bark; the moon shall beam on.

You approach the Mullahs as if they are normal people. They are not. You see them in your own image; you should not.

Muslim brothers be damned; they're our greatest enemies. You know yourself that I'm a Muslim, even a fanatical Muslim. But that does nothing to alter my opinion of the Arabs.

Thank God we in Iran have neither the desire nor the need to suffer from democracy.

My advisers built a wall between myself and my people. I didn't realize what was happening. When I woke up, I had lost my people.

Nobody can influence me, nobody. Still less a woman. Women are important in a man's life only if they're beautiful and charming and keep their femininity.

Shah is a kind of magic word with the Persian people.

They want liberalization! I'll give them liberalization. I'll loosen the screws until the Americans beg me to tighten them again.

A crown, a throne could not be based on the not too very solid foundation of blood.

Let me tell you quite bluntly that this king business has given me personally nothing but headaches.

As far as we are concerned, we are not the toys of any country, including the United States.

Nixon would like to consign us to to the level of the most backward countries in the whole Middle East. Why lower us to the standard of the Saudis rather than raising the Saudis to meet us?

The great powers claim that whatever they possess is theirs by right, but whatever we, the smaller countries possess is negotiable.

This criticism is ridiculous. The twenty-five hundreth anniversary celebration cost me less than the inauguration of each new president of the United States.

There is only one thing I can say about the Shah- he knows how to draw a crowd.

We may be delighted to see Israel putting the Arabs in their place, but we have repeatedly condemned their occupation of Arab territory.

How can you hope to build up a nation by fragmenting its politics into opposing camps? Whatever one group builds, the other will endeavour to destroy.

Who on earth do the Americans suppose their allies are amongst the Arab world? Even Saudi Arabia they seem to regard as nothing more than a resevoir of oil and money.

Nixon is a strong leader with a good grasp of the world's problems. He knows that the only way to argue with the communists is from a position of strength.

The Jewish press in the USA is solely responsible for our poor publicity.

Soviet propaganda is remarkably effective and the Americans are even more remarkably stupid.

Today the name of America has a magic meaning for the most distant commmunities of the world.

Pride comes before a fall - although in [Henry Kissinger's] case it's more conceit than pride.

What's happened recently in Pakistan, India and Kuwait only goes to show that it's futile to imitate Western democracy. They've ended up exactly where they started.

It would serve the Americans right if we emptied the prisons and let the subversives take power. They'd soon show Washington just how much they appreciate good old American values.