Hazem Jokhadar

“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice."

[Stanford University commencement speech, 2005]”
― Steve Jobs

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

[Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“يا من يرى ما في الضمير و يسمع * أنت المعدّ لكل ما يتوقع
يا من يرجّى للشدائد كلها * يا من اليه المشتكى و المفزع
يا من خزائن رزقه في قول كن * امنن فان الخير عندك أجمع
ما لي سوى فقري اليك وسيلة * و بالافتقار اليك فقري أدفع
ما لي سوى قرعي لبابك حيلة * فلئن طردت فأي باب أقرع
و من الذي أدعو و أهتف باسمه * ان كان فضلك عن فقير يمنع
حاشا لمجدك أن تقنِّط عاصيا * الفضل أجزل و المواهب أوسع
بالذل قد وافيت بابك عالما * ان التذلل عند بابك ينفع
وجعلت معتمدي عليك توكلا * و بسطت كفي سائلا أتضرّع
و بحق من أحببته و بعثته * و أجبت دعوة من به يتشفع
اجعل لنا من كل ضيق مخرجا * و الطف بنا يا من اليه المرجع
ثم الصلاة على النبي و آله * خير الخلائق شافع و مشفّع”
― محمد بن إدريس الشافعي, ديوان الإمام الشافعي

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson