I always tell people that a revolution is not an event, it’s a process. It is a struggle. And it doesn’t usually go smoothly.
BASSEM YOUSSEFMake me a CIA agent to use sarcasm to bring down the government and bring down the country because this was all, of course, part of a worldwide conspiracy against the country.
More Bassem Youssef Quotes
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There are people who believe in Egypt that I – I’m actually – I’m getting paid by external powers and external intelligence entities in order to use satire to bring down the government.
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People say, ‘Are you afraid? Are you scared for your life?’ and I tell them: If I choose today to tone it down, if I choose today to shut up, tomorrow me, you, and all of us will be forced to.
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It is very difficult to imagine that you can actually get rid of a dictatorship that has been there for 60 years only in 18 days.
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By the way, I follow the American elections, and I have never seen someone who is that offensive. I have seen people who are stupid. But stupid and offensive, that’s new.
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Satire has its limits. It is really up to the people to make the change. The satirist’s role ends at the screen.
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I think by the time I left Egypt, there was about like 400 accusations against me in the drawer of the public persecutor office. It’s a way for them to exhaust you, to push you, to put you under pressure, to distract you.
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We have Internet now and people are not stupid. But it seems that some people are trying to push the same agenda of the Cold War of conspiracy theories and amazing achievements that are very easily traced and validated.
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It doesn’t matter if the truth is right there out in front of your eyes. You will find a way, a mechanism, in order to keep your own system of denial. So as I always say it, denial is a river that runs in the – in Egypt. So we became very good in that.
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The only the way that you can live and function without seeing the facts in front of you is to put yourself in a constant state of denial.
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The worst thing ever that you have to explain your joke because I was very disappointed trying to explain why the joke is funny for the interrogator.
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It is very depressing to see that in the 21st century people are still using the same 1950s and ’60s style of propaganda.
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People went out there and they wrote articles and went on television shows saying that I am an operative that the CIA who used Jon Stewart to recruit me. So Jon Stewart, who actually – a guy from America was used by the CIA in order to recruit me for the CIA and be.
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Everybody grows up with comedy. I mean, Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing.
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What I saw day-to-day is like people who are actually asking for freedom, calling for freedom – protesting, singing, chanting, calling for the removal of the regime – plain and simple.
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Egypt is kind of like the Hollywood of the Middle East. I mean, we had cinema maybe decades before the other Arab countries ever got independence.
BASSEM YOUSSEF