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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I put castor oil in my eyebrows. And I also tint my eyebrows when I get them cleaned up. That way, I don't have to be constantly filling them in, because I'm lazy.
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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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I look at modern life and I see people not taking responsibility for their lives. The temptation to blame, to find external causes to one's own issues is something that is particularly modern. I know that personally I find that sense of responsibility interesting.
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I couldn't believe they were saying I put a horrible fake plastic bosom over scars I was trying to heal and keep it in place with a tight bra, which could stop my blood flow, just so I could fit into my clothes.
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I have to expend an awful lot of energy actively undoing the impact of my name. Understandably, people assume that I have at least some connection to Iran. The truth is that I don't. I have very little knowledge about the culture, the language, the history. I've never been to Iran. I've never even been inside a mosque.
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My work is always very geometric.
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I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute at all, and if they are cute they very rapidly outgrow it.
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If I don't have the freedom to disbelieve, I cannot believe.
