Egypt

Egypt (Arabic: مِصر‎), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa and the Middle East. The great majority of its estimated 80 million people live near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found.

We are good fighters but lousy builders. Our last piece of original architecture was during ancient Egypt. What are we known for now? A continent plagued with inadequate health facilities but rich Ministers of Health. ~ Michael Matogo

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Quotes edit

And they spoiled the Egyptians.
- Exodus, XII. 36; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 218

let me tell you about the atmosphere in Egypt in May '82. That was a real honeymoon. Everything was open, even euphoric. We had already given back Sinai, and every Egyptian in the street would stop to tell us that Israel was an honorable nation, one that kept its word. Practically all of our friends were making definite plans to visit Israel for congresses, lectures, or simply for private purposes. There was a joint exhibition of women painters-Egyptian and Israeli-at the biggest hotel in Cairo. Once they knew we were Israelis, waiters and shopkeepers refused to accept our tips. "You are family now," they would say. And you know the level of poverty in Egypt where a teacher earns $40 a month. In May of '82, Egypt was a ball! (HC: And then?) SH: And then Israel invaded Lebanon, and everything, everyone stopped-horrified.
- Shulamith Hareven 1985 interview in We Are All Close: Conversations with Israeli Writers by Haim Chertok (1989)

The Egyptian scales of justice are not reversible. There is no justice in Egypt. No reason. Logic committed suicide a while ago. Egypt went crazy. Egypt is ruled by a bunch of lunatics.
- Mohammed Abu Hurira, as quoted in "Four-year-old sentenced to life in prison for murder in Egypt" (19 February 2016), by Caroline Mortimer, The Independent

We are good fighters but lousy builders. Our last piece of original architecture was during ancient Egypt. What are we known for now?
- Michael Matogo, The Burden of a Great Legacy (4 October 2001)

The world of the Greco-Roman Egypt was a wonderfully diverse and pluralistic world, and nowhere is that diversity and pluralism seen more clearly than in the text of ritual power that were produced and used by the people who inhabited that world.
- Marvin Meyer, Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power. Princeton University Press. 1999. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-691-00458-7.

It follows that Egypt is not a "Muslim Country" but a republic, a country for all Egyptians.
- Maajid Nawaz and Tom Bromley, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism (2016), Connecticut: Rowman & Littlefield, p. xxiii
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.
- Osama bin Laden, English translation of a statement in al-Quds al-Arabi (23 February 1998) "Summary/Review of Reports Concerning Threats by Osama Bin Laden to Conduct Terrorist Operations Against the United States and/or her Allies - 23 February 1998 to 16 June 1998"

It is particularly instructive to turn to the example of Egypt under Mohammed Ali, who ruled from 1805 to 1849. [...] The ideals of Mohammed Ali could be related in the idiom of modern social science as being the creation of a viable, self-propelling economy to provide the basis for national independence. Such ideals were diametrically opposed to the needs of European capitalism. British and French industrialists wanted to see Egypt not as a textile manufacturer but as a producer of raw cotton for export, and an importer of European manufactures. European financiers wanted Egypt to be a source of investment, and in the second half of the eighteenth century they turned the sultan of Egypt into an international beggar, who mortgaged the whole of Egypt to international monopoly financiers. Finally, European statesmen wanted Egyptian soil to serve as a base for exploiting India and Arabia. Therefore, the Suez Canal was dug out of Egyptian soil by Egyptians, but it was owned by Britain and France, who then extended political domination over Egypt and Sudan.
- Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Howard University Press. 1972. p. 153. ISBN 978-0-9501546-4-0.

I am dying, Egypt, dying.
- William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1600s), Act IV, scene 15, line 18; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 218.