The stories from Iran's present and past are reminders that freedom, democracy and human rights, or fundamentalism, fascism and terrorism are not geographically and culturally determined, but universal.


Azar Nafisi

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Fuck the past. This was the present.
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I didn't realize. I wasn't trying to rewrite history.

You couldn't if you wanted to. It a...
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Loving money is more of a problem for those who do not have it.
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Like other ghosts, she whispers; not for me to join her, but so that, when I'm close enough, she can...
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More Azar Nafisi

Once we know of atrocities we cannot remain silent, and knowledge inevitably leads to an urge to pro...
AZAR NAFISI
The negative side of the American Dream comes when people pursue success at any cost, which in turn ...
AZAR NAFISI
You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn't exist.
AZAR NAFISI
I would like to think of my own status as what you called 'citizen of the world' or a 'citizen of a ...
AZAR NAFISI
Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in.
AZAR NAFISI
You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn't exist.
AZAR NAFISI
Many times I tell my American students my Iranian students understood how valuable [freedom] is beca...
AZAR NAFISI
Unfortunately for governments like that of Iran, when they forbid something, people become more inte...
AZAR NAFISI
First of all, there are aspects of culture which are really reprehensible, and we should [all] fight...
AZAR NAFISI
Whenever religion, no matter where it comes from, when it claims to spread the word of God through [...
AZAR NAFISI
Iranian fiction has entered a new era...The Islamic Revolution has shaken all values and norms withi...
AZAR NAFISI
Every culture has something to be ashamed of, but every culture also has the right to change, to cha...
AZAR NAFISI
The best work of literature to represent the American Dream is 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scot...
AZAR NAFISI
Those in the west who dismiss the repressiveness of laws against women in countries like Iran, no ma...
AZAR NAFISI
Thus the regime has deprived Iranian women not just of their present rights, but also of their histo...
AZAR NAFISI
Basically, fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological ...
AZAR NAFISI
I finally returned to Iran in 1979, when I got my degree in English and American literature, and sta...
AZAR NAFISI
I would like to say how much I resent people who say of the Islamic Republic that this is our cultur...
AZAR NAFISI
In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, esp...
AZAR NAFISI
Look at Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution and the slogans that they used: anti-imperialism; anti-c...
AZAR NAFISI
You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how compl...
AZAR NAFISI
. . . none of us are as sophisticated in these matters as you think. You know I always feel, with ev...
AZAR NAFISI
Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they...
AZAR NAFISI
We had always segregated sex from feeling and from intellectual love, so you were either pure and vi...
AZAR NAFISI
You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss ...
AZAR NAFISI
I was reminded of a painter friend who had started her career by depicting scenes from life, mainly ...
AZAR NAFISI
A bad author can take the most moral issue and make you want to just never, ever think about that mo...
AZAR NAFISI
[A] great novel will allow you to transcend the social, racial and political limitations imposed by ...
AZAR NAFISI
I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we ...
AZAR NAFISI
That was the first time I experienced the desperate orgiastic pleasure of this form of public mourni...
AZAR NAFISI
It is not accidental that the most unsympathetic characters in Austen's novels are those who are inc...
AZAR NAFISI
For more than 30 years the Islamic regime and its apologists have tried to dismiss women's strug...
AZAR NAFISI
I turned on the flashlight; it cut a small circle of light from the darkness around me.
AZAR NAFISI
She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and ...
AZAR NAFISI
When I was teaching at the University of Tehran we were struggling against the implementation of the...
AZAR NAFISI
I see people who talk about America, and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul, to i...
AZAR NAFISI
This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stonin...
AZAR NAFISI
The biggest crime in Nabokov's 'Lolita' is imposing your own dream upon someone else'...
AZAR NAFISI
America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry?
AZAR NAFISI
I think Islam is in a sense, in crisis. It needs to question and re-question itself.
AZAR NAFISI
Well, that was in 1995 when I resigned from my last academic job.
AZAR NAFISI
When I first left Iran at the age of 13, Iran had become such a shining star - it was the point to w...
AZAR NAFISI
People would react to books by authors like James and Austen almost on a gut level. I think it was n...
AZAR NAFISI
A message was sent by the regime to the faithful: to survive they would have to be loyal to only one...
AZAR NAFISI
Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with someone you loathe.
AZAR NAFISI
When I left class that day, I did not tell them what I myself was just beginning to discover: how si...
AZAR NAFISI
Those who are close to us, when they die, divide our world. There is the world of the living, which ...
AZAR NAFISI
You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place...like you'll not only miss the people ...
AZAR NAFISI
None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you...
AZAR NAFISI
It's the state and local distribution plans that will define victory.
ALEX AZAR
We are overdue for the next pandemic. None of us, nobody, would have immunity.
ALEX AZAR
Nothing from my personal experiences with him would ever have led me to question his integrity, his ...
ALEX AZAR
It is so critical that on every level, every individual becomes prepared.
ALEX AZAR
The looming threat of a global influenza pandemic demands global, regional and national attention, a...
ALEX AZAR
We've got to be prepared on the local level.
ALEX AZAR
Any community that fails to prepare -- with the expectation that the federal government can or will ...
ALEX AZAR
It will not be a cause for panic. It will not be a cause for people to stop hunting. It will not be ...
ALEX AZAR
I liked the look in Carolyn's eyes when she started the second half. She walked out on the court, hi...
JAN AZAR
But she's got to lead us.
JAN AZAR
I don't think we'll do anything differently. We'll try to put a lot of pressure on them.
JAN AZAR
They played like seniors at the end, and we've got to make sure they continue to do that throughout ...
JAN AZAR
We haven't seen the new study yet, and we're not in the habit of prejudging these sorts of things. (...
LARA AZAR
He'll look forward to what they have to tell them.
LARA AZAR
In general, it (the study) appeared to have succeeded in gathering and combining a lot of different ...
LARA AZAR
Oh, boy, that never happened.
LARA AZAR
We're keeping a very close eye on it, but at this point, nothing seems to point to the need for a st...
LARA AZAR
We had another paper that ran the whole thing almost (verbatim) ... and we finally got that paper to...
LARA AZAR
Randall's a good guy, and the governor looks forward to working with him in his role as speaker.
LARA AZAR
The main purpose is to visit troops as their commander in chief to relay the support of the folks ba...
LARA AZAR
With Central Oregon's phenomenal growth, it attracts competition. We feel that, the more choices the...
PAUL AZAR
The sole purpose of universal justice is to keep man's character in balance
JUDY AZAR LEBLANC
Those whose eyes are open cannot see for they are blinded by the lust of all that is around them, an...
JUDY AZAR LEBLANC
Do not let one hand say to another, 'Stop, for I have already given'
JUDY AZAR LEBLANC
For the beauty that adorns the earth is not imitation
JUDY AZAR LEBLANC
Ask not 'who will love me?' but rather, 'whom can I love?'
JUDY AZAR LEBLANC
Freedom is to forgive one another for a perceived wrongdoing
JUDY AZAR LEBLANC
When a customer receives the heat sink, we have tested it thoroughly, thus in almost every case, we ...
DR. KAVEH AZAR
I advise engineers to start by performing first-order calculations to see where a heat-transfer prob...
DR. KAVEH AZAR
Misunderstanding transpired, when common sense became the essence.
MOHAMMAD NAVID NAFISI BAHABADI