Ahmed Emad > Ahmed's Quotes

“Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

“The condemned social order has not been built up on paper and ink, and I don't fancy that a combination of paper and ink will ever put an end to it.”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

“There are more kinds of fools than one can guard against.”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

“As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.”
― Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“...the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minute Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?"
That was very true, he thought. There was a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch except by bottling down some powerful instinct in using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the party, and the party had turned it to account.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad / Roughing It

“Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.”
― Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

“جاوزتُ العشرين ببضع سنين،
لكني أشعر أني متغضّنْ
لا وجهي، بل أعصابي وخيالي ودمائي،
لا أبصر نفسي، بل أبصر مخلوقاً معروقاً هرماً
تتوكأ كفاه على أقرب حائط.”
― صلاح عبد الصبور, ليلى والمجنون

“الناس في بلادي جارحون كالصقور
غناؤهم كرجفة الشتاء في ذؤابة المطر
وضحكهم يئز كاللهب في الحطب
خطاهم تريد أن تسوخ في التراب
ويقتلون,يسرقون, يشربون يجشأون
لكنهم بشر
وطيبون حين يملكون قبضتي نقود
ومؤمنون بالقدر”
― صلاح عبد الصبور, المختار من شعر صلاح عبد الصبور

“مرضت أمى ، قعدت ، عجزت ، ماتت

هل ماتت جوعا لا ، هذا تبسيط ساذج

يتللذ به الشعراء الحمقى والوعاظ الأوغاد

حتى يخفوا بمبالغة ممقوتة

وجه الصدق القاسى

أمى ما ماتت جوعا ، أمى عاشت جوعانة

ولذا مرضت صبحا ، عجزت ظهرا ، ماتت

قبل الليل”
― صلاح عبد الصبور, مأساة الحلاج

“صَفُّونا .. صفّاً .. صفّاً
الأجهرُ صوتاً والأطول وضعوه فى الصَّفِّ الأول
ذو الصوت الخافت والمتوانى وضعوه فى الصف الثانى
أعطوا كُلاً منا ديناراً من ذهب قانى برَّاقا لم تلمسه كفٌ من قبل
قالوا : صيحوا .. زنديقٌ كافر
صحنا : زنديقٌ .. كافر
قالوا : صيحوا ، فليُقتل أنَّا نحمل دمه فى رقبتنا
فليُقتل أنا نحمل دمه فى رقبتنا
قالوا : امضو فمضينا
الأجهرُ صوتاً والأطول يمضى فى الصَّفِّ الأول
ذو الصوت الخافت والمتوانى
يمضى فى الصَّفِّ الثانى”
― صلاح عبد الصبور, مأساة الحلاج

“فالوالى العادل قبس من نور الله ينور بعضا من أرضه..أما الوالى الظالم فستار يحجب نور الله عن الناس كى يفرخ تحت عباءته الشر..”
― صلاح عبد الصبور, مأساة الحلاج

“لو كان لي بعض يقينك لكنت منصوباً إلى يمينك”
― صلاح عبد الصبور, مأساة الحلاج

“هذا زمن الحق الضائع

لا يعرف فيه مقتول من قاتله ومتى قتله

ورؤوس الناس على جثث الحيوانات

ورؤوس الحيوانات على جثث الناس

فتحسس رأسك

فتحسس رأسك !”
― صلاح عبد الصبور

“لقد أنفقت ثروة طائلة في السفر إلي شواطئ بعيدة , فرأيت جبالا شاهقة ومحيطات لايحدها حد . ولكني لم أجد متسعاً من الوقت لأن أخطو بضع خطوات قليلة خارج منزلي , لأنظر إلي قطرة واحدة من الندي , علي ورقة واحدة من أوراق العشب”
― طاغور

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
― Winston Churchill, The River War