Mohamed > Mohamed's Quotes

“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Will having a newborn distract from the time we have together?" she asked. "Don't you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?"

"Wouldn't it be great if it did?" I said. Lucy and I both felt that life wasn't about avoiding suffering.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

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

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull. ”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.”
― Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

“Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’.”
― Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

“But who was more tragic, or who was more damned—the man who knew it, or the man who did not?”
― Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.”
― Julius Lester

“To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

“If you must err, do so on the side of audacity.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

“My body might be a slave, but not my mind. For you, it's the other way round.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

“you got to figure out which end of the needle you’re gon be, the one that’s fastened to the thread or the end that pierces the cloth.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

“We 're all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren 't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that's all" - Lucretia Mott in The Invention of Wings
― Sue Monk Kidd”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

“When mauma saw my raw eyes, she said, “Ain’t nobody can write down in a book what you worth.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

“I’d chosen the regret I could live with best, that’s all.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

“I didn't know how to be in the world without her.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

“For you, a thousand times over”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See