Rania Masri > Rania's Quotes

“قولك لا تفهمني مدح لا أستحقه أنا , واهانة لا تستحقها أنت.”
― جبران خليل جبران

“ويل لأمة تكثر فيها المذاهب والطوائف وتخلو من الدين ، ويل لأمة تلبس مما لاتنسج ، وتأكل مما لاتزرع ، وتشرب مما لاتعصر ، ويل لأمة تحسب المستبد بطلا ، وترى الفاتح المذل رحيما ً، ويل لأمة لاترفع صوتها إلا إذا مشت بجنازة ، ولا تفخر إلا بالخراب ولا تثور إلا وعنقها بين السيف والنطع ..
ويلٌ لأمة سائسها ثعلب، و فيلسوفها مشعوذ، و فنها فن الترقيع و التقليد. ويلٌ لأمة تستقبل حاكمها بالتطبيل و تودعة بالصَّفير، لتستقبل آخر بالتطبيل و التزمير. ويلُ لأمة حكماؤها خرس من وقر السنين، و رجالها الأشداء لا يزالون في أقمطة السرير. ويلٌ لأمة مقسمة إلى أجزاء، و كل جزءي يحسب نفسه فيها أمة.”
― جبران خليل جبران

“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
― Howard Zinn

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
― Howard Zinn

“I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.”
― Howard Zinn

“Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”
― Howard Zinn

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”
― Howard Zinn

“History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.”
― Howard Zinn

“We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”
― Howard Zinn

“I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.”
― Howard Zinn

“The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals the fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such as world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desireable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed.”
― Howard Zinn, Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice – A Revisionist Critique of American Ideology for Peace and Active Citizenship

“Why should we cherish “objectivity”, as if ideas were innocent, as if they don’t serve one interest or another? Surely, we want to be objective if that means telling the truth as we see it, not concealing information that may be embarrassing to our point of view. But we don’t want to be objective if it means pretending that ideas don’t play a part in the social struggles of our time, that we don’t take sides in those struggles.

Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral. In a world already moving in certain directions, where wealth and power are already distributed in certain ways, neutrality means accepting the way things are now. It is a world of clashing interests – war against peace, nationalism against internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism – and it seems to me both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts.”
― Howard Zinn, Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology

“If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.”
― Howard Zinn

“There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.”
― Howard Zinn

“If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive movements of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.”
― Howard Zinn

“Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.”
― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.”
― Howard Zinn

“Before God and high heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“The vast majority of funding in support of women appears to have been directed toward the training of women as participants in political, civil, and economic processes. This approach to women's empowerment is based on two assumptions. The first is that Iraqi women need training to bring them into the public sphere. . . . The second is that women, if equipped with appropriate skills, merely need encouragement to participate and flourish in public life. Such an approach does not consider the social and political context in which women operate and that undoubtedly affects their ability to participate.”
― Nadje Al-Ali, What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq

“The timing of this sudden interest in the plight of Iraqi women cannot be overemphasized. For decades, many Iraqi women activists in the US and UK had tried to raise awareness about the systematic abuse of human and women's rights under Saddam Hussein, the atrocities linked to the Anfal campaign against the Kurds, and the impact of economic sanctions on women and families. . . . 'We wrote so many letters and we organized many events. . . . They did not want to know. They were just not interested. It was only in the run-up to the [2003] invasion that the governments started to care about the suffering of Iraqi women.”
― Nadje Al-Ali, What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq

“كأننا عشرون مستحيل

في اللد , والرملة , والجليل

هنا .. على صدوركم , باقون كالجدار

وفي حلوقكم

كقطعة الزجاج , كالصبار

وفي عيونكم

زوبعة من نار

هنا .. على صدوركم , باقون كالجدار

نجوع .. نعرى .. نتحدى

ننشد الأشعار

ونملأ الشوارع الغضاب بالمظاهرات

ونملأ السجون كبرياء

ونصنع الأطفال .. جيلا ثائرا .. وراء جيل

كأننا عشرون مستحيل

في اللد , والرملة , والجليل

إنا هنا باقون

فلتشربوا البحرا

نحرس ظل التين والزيتون

ونزرع الأفكار , كالخمير في العجين

برودة الجليد في أعصابنا

وفي قلوبنا جهنم حمرا

إذا عطشنا نعصر الصخرا

ونأكل التراب إن جعنا .. ولا نرحل

وبالدم الزكي لا نبخل .. لا نبخل .. لا نبخل

هنا .. لنا ماض .. وحاضر .. ومستقبل

كأننا عشرون مستحيل

في اللد , والرملة , والجليل

يا جذرنا الحي تشبث

واضربي في القاع يا أصول

أفضل أن يراجع المضطهد الحساب

من قبل أن ينفتل الدولاب

لكل فعل رد فعل:- ... إقرأوا

ما جاء في الكتاب”
― توفيق زياد

“You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.”
― Sven Lindqvist, "Exterminate All the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide

“Can we feel contrition for other people's crimes? Can we feel contrition for crimes we have not committed personally, but have subsequently profited from? How can we formulate the criteria for contrition to make them applicable to collective responsibility for historical crimes? Perhaps like this:
We freely admit that our predecessors have done wrong and that we are profiting from it.
We ask forgiveness of those who were wronged and of their descendants.
We promise to do our best to make amends to those who were wronged for the effects that still remain.
The larger the collective, the more diluted the personal responsibility. The less intimate the contrition, the greater the risk that it will just be hollow ceremony.”
― Sven Lindqvist, Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One's Land