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 YOUSSEFWhat 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.
More Bassem Youssef Quotes
-
-
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.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
I don’t care about Donald Trump himself. I care and I worry about the very big base that supports him because this kind of language would have been absolutely nonexistent maybe 15, 20.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
People would believe propagate, spread rumors or conspiracy theories in order to protect their own system of denial.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
I’m sure even in America, where you have, like, free speech people self-censor themself. And it’s not – it happens because of different reasons. Because maybe it’s politically incorrect, it doesn’t have to really to be put in jail.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
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.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
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.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
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.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
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.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
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.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
Everybody grows up with comedy. I mean, Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
Donald Trump is not stupid. He knows exactly what he’s saying. And he’s just saying out there – I mean, forget about Muslims. He said I could go down on Fifth Avenue in New York and shoot someone in the face and people – and the voters will have no problem with it.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
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.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
It is very depressing to see that in the 21st century people are still using the same 1950s and ’60s style of propaganda.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
And of course there were clashes there because people, they tried to remove those protesters from Tahrir. And I was, like, doing my job as a doctor treating them.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
I think that the religious and the military right wings are just two sides of the same coin if somebody uses God and religion and somebody uses country and security.
BASSEM YOUSSEF