Iranian Revolution Quotes

“Israel's demonstration of its military prowess in 1967 confirmed its status as a 'strategic asset,' as did its moves to prevent Syrian intervention in Jordan in 1970 in support of the PLO. Under the Nixon doctrine, Israel and Iran were to be 'the guardians of the Gulf,' and after the fall of the Shah, Israel's perceived role was enhanced. Meanwhile, Israel has provided subsidiary services elsewhere, including Latin America, where direct US support for the most murderous regimes has been impeded by Congress. While there has been internal debate and some fluctuation in US policy, much exaggerated in discussion here, it has been generally true that US support for Israel's militarization and expansion reflected the estimate of its power in the region.

The effect has been to turn Israel into a militarized state completely dependent on US aid, willing to undertake tasks that few can endure, such as participation in Guatemalan genocide. For Israel, this is a moral disaster and will eventually become a physical disaster as well. For the Palestinians and many others, it has been a catastrophe, as it may sooner or later be for the entire world, with the growing danger of superpower confrontation.”
― Noam Chomsky

“If hair is as stimulating as you say then you need to shave your mustache”
― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

“As he defended the book one evening in the early 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment in New York, I knew that some of what he said was true enough, just as some of it was arguably less so. (Edward incautiously dismissed 'speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings or sabotage commercial airliners' as the feverish product of 'highly exaggerated stereotypes.') Covering Islam took as its point of departure the Iranian revolution, which by then had been fully counter-revolutionized by the forces of the Ayatollah. Yes, it was true that the Western press—which was one half of the pun about 'covering'—had been naïve if not worse about the Pahlavi regime. Yes, it was true that few Middle East 'analysts' had had any concept of the latent power of Shi'ism to create mass mobilization. Yes, it was true that almost every stage of the Iranian drama had come as a complete surprise to the media. But wasn't it also the case that Iranian society was now disappearing into a void of retrogressive piety that had levied war against Iranian Kurdistan and used medieval weaponry such as stoning and amputation against its internal critics, or even against those like unveiled women whose very existence constituted an offense?”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“They found records and video-cassettes at their place, a deck of cards, a chess set. In other words, everything that's banned.”
― Marjane Satrapi, The Complete Persepolis

“I shall never forget the tears in the eyes of the shah the day we left Iran. In that deserted runway and in the aircraft, my only thought was whether it was the last time or would [we ever] return.”
― Farah Pahlavi

“If you will it, it's not a dream.”
― Theodor Herzl

“When I left class that day, I did not tell them what I myself was just beginning to discover: how similar our own fate was becoming to Gatsby's. He wanted to fulfill his dream by repeating the past, and in the end he discovered that the past was dead, the present a sham, and there was no future. Was this not similar to our revolution, which had come in the name of our collective past and had wrecked our lives in the name of dream?”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Muslim women have the freedom of choice, taking away this freedom is non-Islamic, it is dictatorship in Islamic clothing.”
― Aysha Taryam

“She just did not want to be a revolutionary. The revolution made her ugly. It covered her. She had pretty hair that she had to hide. She had pretty legs that she had to cover up.”
― Moniro Ravanipour, شب‌های شورانگیز

“I could never forget the face of the man who offered the box of baklava to us on the eve of the Islamic Revolution. He often chased me in my dreams, forcing me to choke down things I never wanted to eat. His keffiyeh became the hallmark of fear, for it represented the revolutionary men who carried guns on the streets and forced us to follow the Islamic hijab in public, which was never before obligatory in Iran.”
― Mojgan Ghazirad, The House On Sun Street

“... научих колко лесно
с да отминеш и да допуснеш извършването на неспра
ведливост. Все си повтарям, че не можех да сторя нищо, но вън
реки това изпитвам срам. Някакъв старец, може би на възрастта
на дядо ми, стоеше между двама паедари, докато ссмейщ
твото му се качваше в един камион. Възрастната жена и пе
колцината млади мъже, всички със завързани зад гърба ръце
бяха откарани нанякъде. В това време старецът плачеше
Преминахме мълчаливо край гази сцена, излязла сякаш от ня
кой нацистки филм.”
― Cherry Mosteshar, Unveiled

“But there comes a moment when the mood burns out and everything ends. As a matter of reflex, out of custom, we go on repeating the gestures and words and want everything to be the way it was yesterday, but we know already — and the discovery Appalls us — that this yesterday will never again return. We look around and make another discovery: those who were with us have also changed —something has burned out in them, as well, something has been extinguished.”
― Ryszard Kapuscinskis, Shah of Shahs

“Antysyjonistyczne informacje przeplatane są wiadomościami o posunięciach Iranu w polityce zagranicznej. „Przedstawiciele Iranu i Białorusi dyskutują nad udoskonaleniem systemu sądownictwa w obu krajach”.”
― Marek Kęskrawiec, Czwarty pożar Teheranu

“The nurse is suddenly taken aback. She does not want to remember the past, which has not yet passed. She does not want to believe that she is a nurse’s aide, that she did not finish her studies, that in the second year in the College of Nursing, the revolution happened…

She does not want to go back to the past, even though nowadays most people do not have a now, and they are constantly tossed from the now platform into the past…”
― Moniro Ravanipour, These Crazy Nights

“And so, with a slow sweep of the arm that remained forever etched in my memory, he took out a match, lit it, and tossed it onto the pile of books. With a quiet huff...ff...ff the flames rippled over the pages, catching first the old books with the brown paper whose smell I loved so much. I vividly remember how Danko's Burning Heart was engulfed in flames that then licked at Luce's skirt who, desperately trying to protect herself from the fire in pages of Romain Rolland's book, held Pierre tightly to her breast. I watched as the fire spread to the intertwined lovers Pierre and Natasha, Heathcliff and Cathrine Earnshaw, Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, abelard and Heloise, Tristan and Isolde, Salaman and Absal, Vis and Ramin, Vamegh and Azra, Zohreh and Manuchehr, shirin and Farhad, Leyli and Majnun, Arthur and Gemma, the Rose and the Little Prince, before they had the chance to smell or kiss each other again, or whisper. "I love you" one last time.”
― Shokoofeh Azar, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

“Le due fotografie davanti a me andrebbero viste in successione. Entrambe incarnano la «fragile irrealtà» - per citare Nabokov a proposito della sua condizione di esule - della nostra vita nella Repubblica islamica dell'Iran. Una foto annulla l'altra, eppure si completano a vicenda. Nella prima, in piedi con il velo e la veste neri, è come se uscissimo dai sogni di qualcun altro. La seconda, invece, mostra l'immagine che abbiamo di noi stessa. In nessuna ci sentiamo davvero a nostro agio.
La seconda foto ci ritrae nel nostro "altro mondo", il soggiorno di casa mia. Fuori però, per quanto dalla finestra si intravedessero solo le montagne e i rami più alti degli alberi, c'era la nostra vita quotidiana, popolata di furie e di streghe malvagie che ci aspettavano dietro l'angolo, per trasformarci nelle creature incappucciate della prima immagine.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“La mia generazione aveva assaggiato la libertà individuale e l'aveva perduta; per quanto questo fosse doloroso, c'era comunque il ricordo a proteggerci dal deserto del presente. Le nuove generazioni, invece, su che cosa potevano contare? I loro desideri, la loro voglia di esprimersi si manifestavano nei modi più bizzarri.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“La principale differenza tra queste ragazze e quelle della mia generazione era che noi sentivano di aver perduto qualcosa, e ci lamentavamo del vuoto che si era creato nella nostra vita quando ci avevano rubato il passato, trasformandoci in esuli nel nostro Paese. Ma se non altro avevamo un passato da paragonare al presente; avevamo ricordi e immagini di ciò che ci era stato portato via. Le mie ragazze invece parlavano sempre di baci rubati, di film che non avevano mai visto e del vento che non avevano mai sentito sulla pelle. I loro ricordi erano fatti di desideri irrealizzati, di cose che non avevano mai avuto. E questa mancanza, questo struggimento per le cose più normali, conferiva alle loro parole una luce malinconica, vicina alla poesia.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“«Signora, le posso parlare un attimo?» [...] C'era un problema con Gatsby. Lo diceva per il mio bene. Per il mio bene? Che strana espressione. Con tutto il rispetto che aveva nei miei riguardi [...] aveva una lamentela da fare. Contro chi, e perché a me? Contro Gatsby. Gli domandai se avesse per caso sporto una formale denuncia contro il signor Gatsby, e gli rammentai che in ogni caso sarebbe stato inutile, dato che la morte estingue il reato.
Ma c'era poco da scherzare. «No, professoressa, non contro il signor Gatsby; contro il romanzo». Era immorale. Insegnava ai giovani le cose sbagliate; avvelenava la loro mente - dovevo essermene senz'altro accorta anch'io. Veramente no, gli dissi. Gli rammentai che Gatsby era un'opera di narrativa, non un manuale di istruzioni per la vita. Di sicuro mi rendevo conto, insistette, che c'era chi prendeva a modello quei romanzi e quei personaggi. Forse il signor Gatsby andava bene per gli americani, ma non per la nostra gioventù rivoluzionaria. [...]
Per Nyazi fra la realtà di tutti i giorni e quella immaginata da Fitzgerald non c'era differenza. Il grande Gatsby era un'opera emblematica, parlava dell'America, e l'America per noi era come il veleno. Era così e basta. Dovevamo insegnare agli studenti iraniani a combattere l'immoralità americana. Era serissimo, e in assoluta buona fede.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Ciò che in Iran avevamo in comune con Fitzgerald - anche se allora non ce ne rendevamo conto - era proprio il sogno, che divenne la nostra ossessione e finì per prendere il sopravvento sulla realtà, un sogno bello e terribile, impossibile da realizzare, in nome del quale si poteva giustificare e perdonare qualunque ricorso alla violenza.
«I sogni», dissi rivolta a Nyazi «sono ideali perfetti, compiuti in se stessi. Come si può sovrapporli a una realtà imperfetta, incompleta, in perenne mutamento? Si farebbe la fine di Humbert, che distrugge l'oggetto dei propri sogni; o di Gatsby, che distrugge se stesso»”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Al-e Ahmad was fundamentally different from all the appropriators of his rhetoric. Even Shariati, who resembled him in many ways, never outwardly showed - and perhaps never felt - the doubts that Al-e Ahmad continually had and expressed. Ultimately these doubts prevented Al-e Ahmad from pushing any single solution as the salvation of Iran; he was the master of social and cultural critique but not of social and cultural construction. This failure was a mark of his extreme loyalty to and honesty about his own feelings.”
― Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran

“لقد شاركت بملء إرادتي و بحماسة في زوالي، كنت امرأة و قد طالب انتصار الثورة هذا بهزيمتي”
― Shirin Ebadi

“Khuzestan is one of Iran’s thirty-one provinces. A province riddled with bullet holes and cuneiform scripts.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“The Persian vizier had outsmarted the British politician.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“I always wonder if I should have avoided looking inside the coffin, as Maman had suggested. Why did she bring me to that horrendous place if she really didn’t want me to see? Now I only come to one conclusion: she wanted me to realize the true nature of the lies the Islamic regime was spoon-feeding to us in the media. She wanted me to see how gloomy and dull that deified cemetery appeared in reality, despite the revolutionaries’ effort to glorify the culture of martyrdom in the country.”
― Mojgan Ghazirad, The House On Sun Street

“C'est peut-être ça, mon problème.
De ne pas croire en Dieu.
S'il existait,
tout s'arrangerait.
Je me vouerais à lui.
Je ne jurerais que par lui.
Si seulement j'étais assez tordue pour croire en ces conneries.
Peut-être que les barges, c'est pas EUX.
Peut-être que la barge, c'est MOI”
― Delphine Minoui, Badjens

“Hommes, femmes, qu'importe. Les portes du monde sont multiples.
À chacun(e) son chemin.
Je hais la neutralité.
Je hais les mots qui nous gomment.
Les virgules qui nous éclipsent, les points qui nous condamnent.
Je hais le monde au masculin.”
― Delphine Minoui, Badjens

“Et si les femmes avaient le pouvoir sur le verbe, serions nous plus heureux?”
― Delphine Minoui, Badjens

“Living can be passive. Witnessing is not passive.”
― NILA, In the Streets of Tehran: Woman. Life. Freedom.

“History is the laboratory of social science theories.”
― Mohsen Sazegara