Mahmoud

“Maybe when a woman shows up in a courtroom wearing a niqab, the correct response isn't to dismiss her case—it's to require that everyone wear a veil”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

“We live in an era when new tools and technologies emerge every day. But the only way those new technologies serve some higher purpose is if a dedicated band of believers insists that they be used to that purpose. That's what the Bomber Mafia tried to do even if their careful plans were lost in the clouds over Eurpoe and blown sidways of the skies of Japan.

They persisted, even in the face of technology’s inevitable misdirection, even when abandoning their dream offered a quicker path to victory, even when Satan offered them all the world if only they would renounce their faith. Without persistence, principles are meaningless. Because one day your dream may come true. And if you cannot keep that dream alive in the interim, then who are you?”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

“If I were to travel back in time, I might urge the young man I was to sit the books aside for a minute, open the windows, and let in some fresh air.

I would tell him to relax, go meet some people, and enjoy the pleasures that life preserves for those in their twenties, the few friends I have in new your tried to offer some advice, you need to lighten up Barak. you need to get laid, you are so idealistic, it’s great, but I don’t know if what you are saying is really possible.

I resisted these voices, I resisted precisely because I feared they were right.”
― Barak Obama, The Promised Land