Ahmed

“Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“إن كل حضارة بالغة تفقد دقة التذوق، تفقد معها أسباب بقائها، والتذوق ليس قوامًا للأدب والفنون وحدها، بل هو أيضًا قوام لكل علم وصناعة، على اختلاف بابات ذلك كله وتباين أنواعه وضروبه. وكل حضارة نامية تريد أن تفرض وجودها، وتبلغ تمام تكوينها،إذا لم تستقل بتذوق حسّاس حادّ نافذ،تختص به وتنفرد، لم يكن لإرادتها في فرض وجودها معنًى يعقل، بل تكاد تكون هذه الإرادة ضربًا من التوهم والأحلام لا خير فيه”
― محمود محمد شاكر, أباطيل وأسمار

“I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My home made education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X