Hooman Majd · 272 pages
Rating: (1.9K votes)
“It is perhaps because of the Iranian concept of the home and garden (and not the city or town it is in) as the defining center of life that Iranians find living in a society with such stringent rules of public behavior somewhat tolerable. Iranian society by and large cares very little about what goes on in the homes and gardens of private citizens, but the Islamic government cares very much how its citizens behave once they venture outside their walls.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“All business in Iran is like first time sex: first there are the promises, then a little foreplay, followed by more promises and perhaps a little petting...at that stage things get complicated - you're not sure who's the boy and who's the girl, but what you do know is that if you continue, you might get fucked...so you decide to proceed cautiously, touching here and touching there, showering the other party with compliments, and whispering an undying commitment, and then maybe, just maybe, it will all end in coitus, but it is rarely as satisfying for one party as it is for the other.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“If we cannot understand the depth of feeling in the Muslim world toward Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islam as a political force, then we will be doomed to failure in every encounter we have with the world.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“The last Shah's father, Reza Shah, made the chador for women and the turban for men illegal in the mid 1930's...In the 1930's women had their chadors forcibly removed from their heads if they dared wear them and were sometimes beaten as well if they resisted.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“He had undoubtedly not availed himself of the ministry archives, archives that might have revealed to him that Iranian diplomats in Paris, from this, his own Foreign Ministry, had taken it upon themselves to issue Iranian passports to Jews escaping the very Holocaust they were aware of, but that he now denied.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“Some people he said, think that freedom means men being able to wear shorts or women to go about without the hijab. Others think that freedom means having a full belly.”
― Hooman Majd, quote from The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
“Remember, buying something is not the problem. The problem comes when we believe, for that moment, that the object we’re buying is going to make us happy.”
― Celso Cukierkorn, quote from Secrets of Jewish Wealth Revealed!
“You look like shit." Honesty is important in any relationship.”
― quote from Curran
“Peace ... He should market it! ... He does every day. Through grateful pieces of the puzzle like you and me.”
― Julie Lessman, quote from A Hope Undaunted
“What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things.”
― Alan W. Watts, quote from The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
“You do not come to the thee-ator and it will wither your soul." (Madam Leadora Seamstress for the Royal Magnificent Theater)”
― Kristen Britain, quote from Blackveil
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