Perspectives

"It's crazy for us to play games with our children's future." Former U.S. president Bill Clinton, responding to the United States' refusal to take mandatory steps in recent talks on climate change

"If European countries claim that they have killed Jews in World War II... why don't they provide the Zionist regime with a piece of Europe?" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, less than two months after calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map." His comments drew sharp rebukes from world leaders.

"This has become a platform for Saddam to show himself as a caged lion when really he was a mouse in a hole." Iraqi Vice President Ghazi al-Yawar, talking about Saddam Hussein 's high-profile Baghdad trial

"Strong in his faith, refreshingly real." A line in an anonymous poem that appeared in an English-language textbook in Pakistan. The poem, which describes the characteristics of a hero, sparked controversy after it emerged that the first letters of each line spell out "President George W. Bush."

"I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it is also very clever." Notorious anti-American playwright Harold Pinter, in a videotaped acceptance speech, after winning the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature

"I've run off with your wife... You take my wife." Mehmet Yaksi, a Turkish villager, calling his neighbor to offer his own wife in exchange

Quotation sources from top: New York Times, BBC, Washingtonpost.com, BBC, San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters

© 2005