Malik Talal > Malik's Quotes

“It's not radical Islam that worries the US -- it's independence”
― Noam Chomsky

“No peace among the nations
without peace among the religions.

No peace among the religions
without dialogue between the religions

No dialogue between the religions
without investigation of the foundation of the religions.”
― Hans Kung, Christianity: Essence, History, and Future

“Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three.”
― Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan

“You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once—there has to be a limit”
― Edward Said

“We can not fight for our rights and our history as well as future until we are armed with weapons of criticism and dedicated consciousness.”
― Edward W. Said

“Humanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.”
― Edward W. Said

“It is quite common to hear high officials in Washington and elsewhere speak of changing the map of the Middle East, as if ancient societies and myriad peoples can be shaken up like so many peanuts in a jar.”
― Edward W. Said

“sometimes the concepts exists but need to be related to new experience.”
― Kalim Siddiqui

“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.”
― Upton Sinclair

“Love is the movement within life that carries us, that enables us, that causes us to break out of what Alan Watts calls the “skin-encapsulated ego.” Without love, we are self-centered, but love enables us to move the center of our lives outside our ego. Therefore it expands our lives and, needless to say, enriches it. Any human being would give anything to love or be loved. When it really happens, it is like heaven on earth.”
― Huston Smith

“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.”
― Huston Smith, Beyond the Post-Modern Mind: The Place of Meaning in a Global Civilization

“Spiritual realization is theoretically the easiest thing and in practice the most difficult thing there is. It is the easiest because it is enough to think of God. It is the most difficult because human nature is forgetfulness of God.”
― Frithjof Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts

“We live in an age of confusion and thirst in which the advantages of communication are greater than those of secrecy.”
― Frithjof Schuon , Esoterism As Principle and As Way

“What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“It's the secrecy surrounding drone strikes that's most troubling. . . We don't know the targeting criteria, or whether the rules for CIA and military drone strikes differ; we don't know the details of the internal process through which targets are vetted; we don't know the chain of command, or the details of congressional oversight. The United States does not release the names of those killed, or the location or number of strikes, making it impossible to know whether those killed were legitimately viewed as combatants or not. We also don't know the cost of the secret war: How much money has been spent on drone strikes? What's the budget for the related targeting and intelligence infrastructures? How is the government assessing the costs and benefits of counterterrorism drone strikes? That's a lot of secrecy for a targeted killing program that has reportedly caused the deaths of several thousand people. (117-118)”
― Rosa Brooks, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

“Ignorance is poison to enlightenment.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“On the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi's 70th birthday. "Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.”
― Albert Einstein

“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking...”
― Leo Tolstoy

“You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
― Confucious

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching