Lesley Hazleton · 239 pages
Rating: (5K votes)
“Assassination creates an instant hero of its target. Any past sins are not just forgiven but utterly forgotten.”
― Lesley Hazleton, quote from After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split
“Man journeys in darkness, and his destiny journeys toward him,” he said, and traveled on.”
― Lesley Hazleton, quote from After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split
“If there was a single moment it all began, it was that of Muhammad's death. Even the Prophet was mortal. That was the problem. It was as though nobody had considered the possibility that he might die, not even Muhammad himself.”
― Lesley Hazleton, quote from After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split
“In Shia lore, Fatima lives on in another dimension to witness her sons’ suffering and to weep for them. She is the Holy Mother, whose younger son would sacrifice himself to redeem humanity just as had the son of that other great mother, Mary. Like her, Fatima is often called the Virgin as a sign of her spiritual purity. Like her, she will mourn her offspring until the Day of Judgment,”
― Lesley Hazleton, quote from After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split
“Arabic is a subtle and sinuous language. Like all Semitic languages, it plays on words, taking a three-consonant root and building on it to create what sometimes seems an infinite number of meanings. Even the exact same word can have different connotations, depending on the context. Perhaps the best-known example is jihad, struggle, which can be either the inner striving to live the Islamic life and attain a higher level of spiritual consciousness, or the external armed confrontation with those seen as enemies of Islam.”
― Lesley Hazleton, quote from After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split
“Arabia would not exert political power again for more than a thousand years, until the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect emerged from the central highlands in the eighteenth century to carry out violent raids against Shia shrines in Iraq and even against the holy places of Mecca and Medina.”
― Lesley Hazleton, quote from After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split
“But raw numbers can be misleading. In the Middle East heartland of Islam, the Shia are closer to fifty percent, and wherever oil reserves are richest—Iran, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf coast, including eastern Saudi Arabia—they are in the majority.”
― Lesley Hazleton, quote from After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split
“It was as though nobody had considered the possibility that he might die, not even Muhammad himself.”
― Lesley Hazleton, quote from After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split
“I have always longed to be part of the outward life, to be out there at the edge of things, to let the human taint wash away in emptiness and silence as the fox sloughs his smell into the cold unworldliness of water; to return to town a stranger. Wandering flushes a glory that fades with arrival.”
― J.A. Baker, quote from The Peregrine
“There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.
Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. By WHY I mean your purpose, cause or belief - WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?
People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us.
For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. It’s not “integrity,” it’s “always do the right thing.” It’s not “innovation,” it’s “look at the problem from a different angle.” Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea - we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation.
Happy employees ensure happy customers. And happy customers ensure happy shareholders—in that order.
Leading is not the same as being the leader. Being the leader means you hold the highest rank, either by earning it, good fortune or navigating internal politics. Leading, however, means that others willingly follow you—not because they have to, not because they are paid to, but because they want to.
You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.
Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left.
Trust is maintained when values and beliefs are actively managed. If companies do not actively work to keep clarity, discipline and consistency in balance, then trust starts to break down.
All organizations start with WHY, but only the great ones keep their WHY clear year after year.”
― Simon Sinek, quote from Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
“See every distraction as a clarion call back to prayer.”
― Jared Brock, quote from A Year of Living Prayerfully: How a Curious Traveler Met the Pope, Walked on Coals, Danced with Rabbis, and Revived His Prayer Life
“Once you surrender to hope, its a long road back to reason." There was a certain tone of self-loathing in the way Crest said it.”
― Benjamin Wood, quote from The Bellwether Revivals
“Forever is a really, really long time,”
― Jillian Dodd, quote from Hate Me
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