Tarek Amr > Tarek's Quotes

“He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“الحديث مع فتاة متحررة بالنسبة لي هنا كان مثل نسمة هواء باردة ومنعشة، أستعيد بها روحي التي كانت تختنق أمام تناقضات وإزدواجية فتيات يردن التحرر، بينما يقررن أن الزواج والجلوس في البيت قد يكون نهاية المطاف، أو حتي بعض الفتيات المتحررات اللائي لا يرين غضاضة في أن ينفق عليهن رجل بالكامل. لم أستطع أن أفهم منطقهن الانتهازي، الحصول على مزايا التحرر، و مزايا النظام الشرقي الأبوي التقليدي معًا.”
― إبراهيم فرغلي, جنية في قارورة

“لا يهم أي درجة من الطمأنينة أصل إليها، هناك دائمًا جزء مني، يجفل من كل شيء، كغزال بري.”
― أسما حسين

“Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves.”
― Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

“The revolution has to be customised”
― Scott Rosenberg, Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software

“Given that Socrates was effectively assassinated by poison, you might think twice before accepting his invitation to breakfast.”
― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

“Although her disobedience is tragic, Eve’s innocence is not all bad. Certainly, that innocfence leads her to make a poor choice - the very worst - but the fact that she makes a choice at all, the fact that she engages the Devil in a debate which could go either way, the fact that she acts without God breathing down her neck - all speak for her free will or, what amounts to the same thing, her margin for error. It is from this margin for error that freedom springs, because you can’t be free to right unless you can be free to be wrong.”
― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

“The associations get only richer and more intense when you realise that the very concept of truth - the cornerstone of philosophy and religion alike, let alone law - also rests heavily on the meaning of waking up. And you don't need a philosopher to appreciate it, because there are clues to its dependency in everyday phrases such as 'waking up to the truth', 'my eyes were opened' and even 'wake up and smell the coffee'. If such phrases hint that waking up and truth are bedfellows of some sort, you need only go back to the ancient Greek for corroboration. There you'll find that the word truth is 'aletheia', from which in English we get the word for 'lethargy'. But see how the Greek word is 'a-letheia' rather than letheia - that is truth is the opposite of lethargy. And what is opposite of lethargy, if not waking up?”
― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

“Clothes exist to hide the pubic from the public and therefore make you socially acceptable. The irony is that, precisely because they are a prerequisite for social inclusion, wearing clothes has become almost more natural than being naked ... To that established irony, we can add a more subtle one. As anyone who has been on a date well knows, clothes aren't just about covering you up: while you need them to hide your sex, you want them to show your sexuality.”
― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

“Getting ready is that point in the day when the rivalry between the two needs is likely to peak, because we are making transition from being at home and pleasing ourselves (ego) to going out and having to conform to a series of norms an conventions (superego). We become less ego and more superego with each button we fasten”
― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

“I became convinced that the advanced industrial countries, through international organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Bank, were not only not doing all that they could to help these [developing] countries but were sometimes making their life more difficult. IMF programs had clearly worsened the East Asian crisis, and the "shock therapy" they had pushed in the former Soviet Union and its satellites played an important role in the failure of the transition.”
― Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work

“Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies.”
― Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work

“Overborrowing or overlending? Lenders encourage indebtedness because it is profitable. Developing country governments are sometimes even pressured to overborrow ... Even without corruption, it is easy to be influenced by Western businessmen and financiers ... Countries that aren't sure that borrowing is worth the rist are told how important it is to establis a credit rating: borrow even if you really don't need the money.”
― Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.)”
― René Descartes

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”
― René Descartes

“Doubt is the origin of wisdom”
― Rene Descartes

“In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.”
― René Descartes

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“But to unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man, and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity - that is absolutely forbidden. For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought to know, but to renounce it for posterity is to injure and trample on the rights of mankind.”
― Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

“A banker is a person who is willing to make you a loan if you present sufficient evidence to show you don't need it.”
― Herbert V. Prochnow

“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! With the rational respect that is due to it, knavish priests have added prostitutions of it, that fill or might fill the blackest and bloodiest pages of human history.

{Letter to Thomas Jefferson, September 3, 1816]”
― John Adams, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams

“The problem with gross domestic product is the gross bit. There are no deductions involved: all economic activity is accounted as if it were of positive value. Social harm is added to, not subtracted from, social good. A train crash which generates £1bn worth of track repairs, medical bills and funeral costs is deemed by this measure as beneficial as an uninterrupted service which generates £1bn in ticket sales.”
― George Monbiot

“The debt we owe our parents can never be squared, and jolly good too, because doing so would threaten to nullify all relationship, all emotional commerce between the two generations. Being in debt, just like being in credit, means an active interest applies between the two parties and, once the debt is taken care of, the interest is bound to wane.”
― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

“I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“[Roland] Barthes turned the thable on the author, saying no only the a book needs a reader to wake it into life, but that in so doing the reader becomes nothing less that the author, who reveals in the book's hermeneutic possibilities, releases them and so becomes its own creator.”
― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

“I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.”
― Michel Foucault

“Credit' comes from the Latin 'credere', 'to believe', for credit is the belief that the money you're borrowing will someday be returned, a belief that needs the future to function in.”
― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

“Let's remember you can still go shopping without buying, because where buying is a matter of need, shopping is a question of want.”
― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

“The psyche will do anything to avoid pain, and when faced with something traumatic, like having to pay, its instinct is to put it off - what Freud called 'Nachträglichkeit' or delayed effect. Credit card and psyche conspire to soften the blow of paying by staggering it over time.”
― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day