Mohammed Reza Pahlavi Quotes

Let the dog bark; the moon shall beam on.

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.

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

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.

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

The Saudis have never shown any respect for human rights, either now or in the past. Even a petty burglar faces having one of his hands chopped off. The liberal press in America prefers to ignore all this, although they don't hesitate to blacken the reputation of Iran.

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

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

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

Growing terrorism, permissive societies, democracy collapsing through lack of law and order. If things continue on their present track, the disintegration of Western societies will occur much sooner than you think under the hammer blows of fascism and communism. Freedom is not something that does not have a breaking point, and your enemies would like you to reach that point.

I cannot avoid wondering about the feelings of those who are now the apparent rulers of Iran. They are, despite their mistakes and the crimes which they have instigated, men of faith who claim to be sent by God. I hope they will eventually realize that the revolution which they believe they have brought about is not to the glory of God, but serves the forces of evil.

O Cyrus , great King, King of Kings, Achaemenian King, King of the land of Iran. I, the Shahanshah of Iran, offer thee salutations from myself and from my nation. Rest in peace, for we are awake, and we will always stay awake.

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.

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

Nixon has the audacity to tell me to do nothing in the interest of my country until he dictactes where that interest lies. At the same time he threatens me that failure to follow his so-called advice will be to jeopardize the special relations between our two countries. I say to hell with such special relations.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

For all its apparent tolerance, the USA maintains a peculiar balance between the forces of capitalism and democracy. To achieve this I feel sure the country is guided by some hidden force; an organization working in secrecy, powerful enough to dispose of the Kennedys and of anyone else who gets in its way.

I have learned by experience that a tragic end awaits anyone who dares cross swords with me; Nasser is no more, John and Robert Kennedy died at the hands of assassins, their brother Edward has been disgraced, Krushchev was toppled, the list is endless.

He [the King of Morocco] spends half his time asleep and the rest of it buried between the legs of the fairer sex.

I will frankly confess that I was convinced that God had ordained me to do certain things for the service of my nation, things that perhaps could not be done by anyone else. In whatever I have done and whatever I do in the future, I consider myself as an agent of the will of God.