1960s
“Why should we be closer to the Soviets? Because the Americans have challenged us. America is involved in a conspiracy [against the Arab world], primarily because of its policy toward Israel. In our view, whoever is against the Americans stands with us. The enemy of your enemy is your friend.”
Time (9 April 1979) " World: An Interview with Gaddafi http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,920211-1,00.html"
Interviews
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Muammar Gaddafi 66
Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist 1942–2011Related quotes
There Will Be No Reconciliation with America before Withdrawal, Apology, and Compensation http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=1402, exclusive interview, March 2007.
Targeting collaborators
2000s, 2003, Mission Accomplished (May 2003)
Source: The Goblin Quest Series, Goblin Hero (2007), Chapter 7 (p. 117)
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
Machiavelli commented on the relative ease of gaining favor from friends and enemies in Chapter 20 of The Prince, quoted above. However, this particular wording comes from a line spoken by Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974), written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola:
My father taught me many things here. He taught me in this room. He taught me: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
Misattributed
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
This has often been attributed to Sun Tzu and sometimes to Petrarch. It comes most directly from a line spoken by Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974), written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola:
My father taught me many things here. He taught me in this room. He taught me: keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
Niccolò Machiavelli, who is also sometimes credited, wrote on the subject in The Prince:
It is easier for the prince to make friends of those men who were contented under the former government, and are therefore his enemies, than of those who, being discontented with it, were favourable to him and encouraged him to seize it.
Misattributed
"The Poodle Gets Kicked" http://buchanan.org/blog/the-poodle-gets-kicked-3731 (March 15, 2010), Patrick J. Buchanan
2010s
2000s, 2004, Speech at the Republican National Convention (2004)