Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in.
Azar NafisiRead
It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the bravery required not just for martyrdom but for sustaining one's beliefs in everyday life.
Azar Nafisi's quote reflects on the duality of courage, suggesting that while the ultimate sacrifice of dying for a cause is a profound act of bravery, the everyday struggle to live authentically for one's beliefs and values is equally daunting. It highlights the importance of steadfastness and resilience in the pursuit of a principled life, showcasing that living for a cause demands continuous strength and commitment.
In practice
During a motivational speech on activism.
Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in.
After the rigged Iranian presidential elections in 2009, the Islamic regime attacked the 'humanities' as the main source of protests, the most effective tool used by the West, especially America, to corrupt and incite Iranian youth, and finally closed down all the Humanities departments in Iran's universities.
The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality.
I believe that it is only through empathy, that the pain experienced by an Algerian woman, a North Korean dissident, a Rwandan child or an Iraqi prisoner, becomes real to me and not just passing news. And it is at times like this when I ask myself, am I prepared - like Huck Finn - to give up Sunday school heaven for the kind of hell that Huck chose?
I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.
Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The soldiers that didn't come back were the heroes. It's a roll of the dice. If a bullet has your name on it, you're a hero. If you hear a bullet go by, you're a survivor.
On becoming soldiers we have not ceased to be citizens.
Of men who have a sense of honor, more come through alive than are slain, but from those who flee comes neither glory nor any help.
A glorious death is his, who for his country falls.
We are here to advance the cause of women and to advance the cause of democracy and to make it absolutely clear that the two are inseparable.
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