Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in.
Azar NafisiRead
Unfortunately for governments like that of Iran, when they forbid something, people become more interested.
Interpretation
Prohibitions often spark curiosity and rebellion, especially in restrictive societies.
Azar Nafisi's quote highlights the paradox of censorship, suggesting that when a government imposes restrictions on certain subjects or activities, it often leads to increased interest and desire among the populace. This reflection on human nature implies that the act of forbidding can unintentionally amplify curiosity and resistance, leading people to seek out what is being suppressed, thereby undermining the very authority that seeks to control them.
In practice
During a speech at a human rights rally.
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.
It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.
That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.
Election days come and go. But the struggle of the people to create a government which represents all of us and not just the one percent - a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice - that struggle continues.
I have an idea about voting, how about on every ballot we include "None of the above". People may laugh at that, but what that is, it is a vote of no confidence in your government and I'm willing to bet that in some elections, 'None of the Above' would win. Imagine if you won the election but lost to 'None of the Above'. Wouldn't that make you re-think your positions?
If I could have anything - you know, and this is across the board for any presidential candidate - I would have a greater acknowledgment of history in our policy and in our affairs.
We will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for, and that is, freedom, democracy and the fight against disease, poverty and terrorism.
He mocks the people who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor.
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