Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car, wouldn't you help him?
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If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.
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I'm a decent tennis player. Good backhand.
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It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
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A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.
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I have a very broad demographic, from the 8-year-old who knows every word to 'Ice Ice Baby' and the college kid who grew up on 'Ninja Rap' to the soccer mom and grandparent.
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There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.
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This is what the election of 2010 was about. We didn't send conservatives to Washington to flirt with Democrat proposals for higher taxes and more debt. We sent leaders to stop them.
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I've got two small kids. I want to make sure they grow up to be good people. Do they treat people well? Are they kind?
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It was kind of exciting being on the radio. Not everybody was on the radio.
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When you are covering a life-or-death struggle, as British reporters were in 1940, it is legitimate and right to go along with military censorship, and in fact in situations like that there wouldn't be any press without the censorship.
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Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning.
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Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
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My father put it right when he said: 'I don't get ulcers. I give ulcers.'
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It is African scholars themselves who will create the ultimate Encyclopaedia Africana.
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In the military, a combatant command is the ultimate job. It's the pointy tip of the spear, overseeing the people carrying the rifles and flying the aircraft.
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visiting Jackson Pollock’s studio: You do not work from nature. This is no good, you will repeat yourself. You work by heart, not from nature. Pollock reacted: 'I am nature
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This will end in tears.
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I never show the back of my tongue. That is a Dutch expression.
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ἐπάμεροι: τί δέ τις;τί δ᾽ οὔ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρἄνθρωπος. ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν αἴγλα διόσδοτος ἔλθῃ,λαμπρὸν φέγγος ἔπεστιν ἀνδρῶν καὶ μείλιχος αἰών
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Believe it or not, my introduction to scary literature was 'Pinocchio.' My mother read it to me every day before naptime when I was three or four. The original 'Pinocchio' is terrifying.
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Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.
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I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.
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If I don't have the freedom to disbelieve, I cannot believe.
