Mostafa Elhakeem

“For a crippled man like me, personal happiness was possible only in dreams.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Complete Short Novels

“‎Honoured sir, poverty is not a vice, that's a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkeness is not a virtue, and that's even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but in beggary--never--no one. For beggary a man is not chased out of human society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom, so as to make it as humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch as in beggary as I am ready to be the first to humiliate myself.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“As for my division of people into ordinary and extraordinary, I acknowledge that it’s somewhat arbitrary, but I don’t insist upon exact numbers. I only believe in my leading idea that men are in general divided by a law of nature into two categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to say, material that serves only to reproduce its kind, and men who have the gift or the talent to utter a new word. There are, of course, innumerable sub- divisions, but the distinguishing features of both categories are fairly well marked. The first category, generally speaking, are men conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they live under control and love to be controlled. To my thinking it is their duty to be controlled, because that’s their vocation, and there is nothing humiliating in it for them. The second category all transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood—that depends on the idea and its dimensions, note that. It’s only in that sense I speak of their right to crime in my article (you remember it began with the legal question). There’s no need for such anxiety, however; the masses will scarcely ever admit this right, they punish them or hang them (more or less), and in doing so fulfil quite justly their conservative vocation. But the same masses set these criminals on a pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or less). The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me—and vive la guerre éternelle—till the New Jerusalem, of course!”
― Fydor Dostoevsky

“اللهم إنك أنعمت على الناس فوهبتهم الضمير وهو روح منك، وجعلت أمره أمرك ونهيه نهيك، فمن أطاعه فقد أطاعك ومن عصاه فقد عصاك.
وتركت أمر اتباعه لنا، فاجعل أعمالنا في حدود هذا الضمير. اللهم لا تجمع علينا من أمور الدنيا ما يحملنا على تعدي حدود الضمير. اللهم ألهم الناس أن لا يهتدوا بغيره، وأوزعهم أن لا يتغاضوا عنه لأمر مهما يكن جللا، وأن لا يقيموا أوثانا يعبدونها من دونه يحسبونها خيرا، فإنه لا خير وراء الضمير.
اللهم واهد الذين يتولون أمور الناس إلى أن لا يضعوا نظما تضطرهم إلى تعدي حدود الضمير، وأن لا يوقعوا بغيرهم أذى عاجلا محققا في سبيل ما يحسبونه خيرا آجلا ينفع الجماعة، فإن هذا أصل بلاء الناس ومصدر الشر فيهم.
اللهم إنك لم تجعل الضمير قوة مادية تحمل الناس على اتباعه مرغمين، فاجعل فيهم من القوة الروحية ما يجعلهم يتبعونه مختارين راضين. إن هذا يمحو الظلم، ومحو الظلم والشر يقوي إيمان الناس ويهديهم سواء السبيل.
اللهم فاهد عبادك انهم يكادون يضلون ضلالا لا رجعة فيه. انك انت السميع العليم.”
― د. محمد كامل حسين