Andrew Roberts: The Top 10 Quotes from Gaddafi's Green Book
[Historian Andrew Roberts' latest book, Masters and Commanders, was published in the UK in September. His previous books include Napoleon and Wellington, Hitler and Churchill, and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. Roberts is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.]
Watching Colonel Gaddafi’s public statements over the past two weeks, especially his long rants comparing his political role with that of Queen Elizabeth II and his TV interview claiming that all Libyans love him except those given hallucinogenic drugs by al Qaeda, one might be forgiven for assuming that the looming prospect of death or exile has sent him mad. Comparisons with Bruno Ganz’s superb portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the movie Downfall, as the Red army closes in on the Fuhrerbunker in April 1945, are unavoidable. Yet in fact utter irrationality has long been the leitmotif of Gaddafi’s thought, as is proved by his 1975 work of political and social philosophy, The Green Book.
Like Chairman Mao’s little red book, Gaddafi encapsulated his most profound thoughts in a short book that was to be required reading—enforced required reading—for all his people. I had the misfortune of having nothing else to read due to a baggage mix-up during a trip to Libya two years ago, and so am one of the few non-Libyans to have read The Green Book. After resigning the premiership of Libya in 1972, and taking on the catchy official title of “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,” Gaddafi wrote The Green Book....
The Top 10 Quotes From Gaddafi’s Green Book:
1. “Women, like men, are human beings. This is an incontestable truth… Women are different from men in form because they are females, just as all females in the kingdom of plants and animals differ from the male of their species… According to gynecologists women, unlike men, menstruate each month… Since men cannot be impregnated they do not experience the ailments that women do. She breastfeeds for nearly two years.”...
Read entire article at The Daily Beast
Watching Colonel Gaddafi’s public statements over the past two weeks, especially his long rants comparing his political role with that of Queen Elizabeth II and his TV interview claiming that all Libyans love him except those given hallucinogenic drugs by al Qaeda, one might be forgiven for assuming that the looming prospect of death or exile has sent him mad. Comparisons with Bruno Ganz’s superb portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the movie Downfall, as the Red army closes in on the Fuhrerbunker in April 1945, are unavoidable. Yet in fact utter irrationality has long been the leitmotif of Gaddafi’s thought, as is proved by his 1975 work of political and social philosophy, The Green Book.
Like Chairman Mao’s little red book, Gaddafi encapsulated his most profound thoughts in a short book that was to be required reading—enforced required reading—for all his people. I had the misfortune of having nothing else to read due to a baggage mix-up during a trip to Libya two years ago, and so am one of the few non-Libyans to have read The Green Book. After resigning the premiership of Libya in 1972, and taking on the catchy official title of “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,” Gaddafi wrote The Green Book....
The Top 10 Quotes From Gaddafi’s Green Book:
1. “Women, like men, are human beings. This is an incontestable truth… Women are different from men in form because they are females, just as all females in the kingdom of plants and animals differ from the male of their species… According to gynecologists women, unlike men, menstruate each month… Since men cannot be impregnated they do not experience the ailments that women do. She breastfeeds for nearly two years.”...