Ahmad Raza > Ahmad's Quotes

“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
― Milton Friedman

“Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance, analysis, and interpretation—at least in the foreign policy world—depend on context and relevance.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“أتظن أن الألحان من صنع الأوتار؟
كلا، إنها رجع الكلمات التي ولدت في القلب.”
― Rasul Gamzatov, بلدي

“I am afraid because I can so clearly foresee my own life rotting away of itself, like a leaf that rots without falling, while I pursue my round of existence from day to day.”
― Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun

“Beauty was not everything. Beauty had this penalty — it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life — froze it.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't even be worth reading.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Its easy to make frends if you let pepul laff at you.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibilty, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Why am I always looking at life through a window?”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed. A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything - all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it. Is there time?”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Who's to say that my light is better than your darkness? Who's to say death is better than your darkness? Who am I to say?”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Even in the world of make-believe there have to be rules. The parts have to be consistent and belong together.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“But I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damned thing. Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols. But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligent and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn...Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love...Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“No one really starts anything new, Mrs. Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven.”
― Mark Twain

“I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

“Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.”
― Karl R. Popper

“When I was very young and in the cave of Trophonius I forgot to laugh. Then, when I got older, when I opened my eyes and saw the real world, I began to laugh and I haven’t stopped since. I saw that the meaning of life was to get a livelihood, that the goal of life was to be a High Court judge, that the bright joy of love was to marry a well-off girl, that the blessing of friendship was to help each other out of a financial tight spot, that wisdom was what the majority said it was, that passion was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined 10 rix-dollars, that cordiality was to say ‘You’re welcome’ after a meal, and that the fear of God was to go to communion once a year. That’s what I saw. And I laughed.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“Violet learned then what she had forgotten until this moment: that laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears.”
― Toni Morrison, Jazz

“There are three sides to every story.
Yours
Mine.
What really happened: the truth.”
― Jeyn Roberts, Rage Within

“the hopelessness that comes from knowing too little and feeling too much (so brittle, so dry he is in danger of the reverse: feeling nothing and knowing everything)”
― Toni Morrison, Jazz

“Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.”
― Toni Morrison, Jazz

“I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?'

" 'The way I want it?'

" 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?'

" 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.'

" 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.'

" 'Mess it up how?'

" 'Forgot it.'

" 'Forgot?'

" 'Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.”
― Toni Morrison, Jazz

“A son ain't what a woman say. A son is what a man do.”
― Toni Morrison, Jazz

“Life is not so idiotically mathematical that only the big eat the small; it is just as common for a bee to kill a lion or at least to drive it mad.”
― August Strindberg, Miss Julie

“There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.”
― August Strindberg, The ghost sonata