Ali Reda > Ali's Quotes

“لم يكن يوم فرح ولم يكن يوم أسى كذلك. الأسى جاء بعدها.”
― دياب عيد, العشق الدمشقي

“أرخت «رقيَّة» خمارها. فأسفر عن وجهها الوضّاء الذي ارتسمت عليه ابتسامةٌ حزينةٌ. وأحسَّ «حمدان» بقلبه يقفز من مكانه، واقترب من باب سجنه حيث الكوَّة وعيناه مسمَّرتان في عينيها الحانيتين وقال: أنتِ؟ رقيَّة !؟ ماذا تفعلين في السجن يا ابنة قائد الحامية؟قالت بثقة: أريد إخراجك يا حمدان.”
― دياب عيد

“Those who believe they speak their language would be speaking mine; those who believe they were acting in their party would be acting in mine; those who believe they were marching under their flag would be marching under mine.”
― Maurice Joly, The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu: Humanitarian Despotism And The Conditions Of Modern Tyranny

“Texts are not finished objects.”
― Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism

“Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are non-coercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom.”
― Edward W. Said

“They weren't like us and for that reason deserved to be ruled.”
― Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

“- جعت؟
- أيجون الحالمون؟
- أنت الآن شاعر سيء! نعم، يجوعون، لكي يحلموا ثانية، وثالثة !”
― إبراهيم نصر الله, شرفة الهاوية

“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Only those who attempt the absurd...will achieve the impossible. I think ...I think it's in my basement...Let me go upstairs and check.”
― M.C. Escher

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
― Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers

“The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.”
― Aristotle

“You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back.”
― Beverly Rubik

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
― William James

“When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.”
― William James

“The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr.

“No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.”
― Helen Keller

“Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.”
― Francis Bacon

“We never know self-realization. We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Now, even more than the evening before, he could think of no one with whom to compare her. She had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes

“After he became the Master, the world believed that he could not lose, and he had to believe it himself. Therein was the tragedy.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, The Master of Go

“It may be said that the Master was plagued in his last match by modern rationalism, to which fussy rules were everything, from which all the grace and elegance of Go as art had disappeared, which quite dispensed with respect for elders and attached no importance to mutual respect as human beings. From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation. The road to advancement in rank, which controlled the life of a player, had become a meticulous point system. One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and the fragrance of Go as an art. The modern way was to insist upon doing battle under conditions of abstract justice...”
― Yasunari Kawabata, The Master of Go

“True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”
― Yukio Mishima

“For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life.”
― Jaggi Vasudev

“Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“The man who fears losing has already lost.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones