Muhammad Iqbal Quotes & Sayings

Become dust - and they will throw thee in the air; Become stone - and they will throw thee on glass. — Muhammad Iqbal

The possessor of a sound heart puts to test his power by entering into big adventures. — Muhammad Iqbal

People who have no hold over their process of thinking ara likely to be ruined by liberty of thought. — Muhammad Iqbal

Preserve your history and become everlasting; receive new life from the times that have gone by. — Muhammad Iqbal

Plants and minerals are bound to predestination. The faithful is only bound to the Divine orders. — Muhammad Iqbal

Yet higher religion, which is only a search for a larger life, is essentially experience and recognized the necessity of experience as its foundation long before science learnt to do so. — Muhammad Iqbal

Man is primarily governed by passion and instinct. — Muhammad Iqbal

The great point in Christianity is the search for an independent content for spiritual life which, according to the insights of its founder, could be elevated, not by the forces of a world external to the soul of man, but by the revelation of a new world within his soul. Islam fully agrees with this insight and supplements it by the further insight that the illumination of the new world thus revealed is not something foreign to the world of matter but permeates it through and through.
Thus the affirmation of spirit sought by Christianity would come not by the renunciation of external forces which are already permeated by the illumination of spirit, but by a proper adjustment of man's relation to these forces in view of the light received from the world within. — Muhammad Iqbal

The man of Love follows the path of God-and shows affection to both the believer and the nonbe-liever. — Muhammad Iqbal

For centuries Eastern heart and intellect have been absorbed in the question Does God exist? I propose to raise a new question new, that is to say, for the East Does man exist? — Muhammad Iqbal

British physician, West African Countries and Peoples Man's place is higher than the sky. Respect for man is the underlying spirit of civilization. — Muhammad Iqbal

Conduct, which involves a decision of the ultimate fate of the agent cannot be based on illusions. — Muhammad Iqbal

The Westerners have lost the vision of heaven, they go hunting for the pure spirit in the belly. The pure soul takes not color and scent from the body, and Communism has nothing to do save with the body. — Muhammad Iqbal

I have seen the movement of the sinews of the sky,
And the blood coursing in the veins of the moon. — Muhammad Iqbal

From your past emerges the present, and from the present is born your future. — Muhammad Iqbal

If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy. — Muhammad Iqbal

The alchemist of the West has turned stone into glass
But my alchemy has transmuted glass into flint
Pharaohs of today have stalked me in vain — Muhammad Iqbal

-To Javed-
My way of life is poverty, not the pursuit of wealth;
Barter not thy Selfhood; win a name in adversity. — Muhammad Iqbal

It is absolutely certain that God does exist. — Muhammad Iqbal

I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India. — Muhammad Iqbal

It is the mysterious touch of the ideal that animates and sustains the real, and through it alone we can discover and affirm the ideal. — Muhammad Iqbal

Democracy is a system where people are counted not weighed. — Muhammad Iqbal

Let this be our beautiful departure from stagnation; let our minds come alive; enter another dimension; go beyond the stars eagerly struggling to find that ... which our naked eyes did not know existed; rise like a falcon born to soar and not be alone but be present amongst others. — Muhammad Iqbal

Divine life is in touch with the whole universe on the analogy of the soul's contact with the body. — Muhammad Iqbal

The truth is that the religious and the scientific processes, though involving different methods, are identical in their final aim. Both aim at reaching the most real. — Muhammad Iqbal

The intellect of two thousand asses cannot bring forth a single man's thought. — Muhammad Iqbal

But the perception of life as an organic unity is a slow achievement, and depends for its growth on a people's entry into the main current of world-events. — Muhammad Iqbal

When truth has no burning, then it is philosophy, when it gets burning from the heart, it becomes poetry. — Muhammad Iqbal

It may, however, be said that the level of experience to which concepts are inapplicable cannot yield any knowledge of a universal character, for concepts alone are capable of being socialized. — Muhammad Iqbal

Our bread and water are of one table: the progeny of Adam are as a single soul. — Muhammad Iqbal

The standpoint of the man who relies on religious experience for capturing Reality must always remain individual and incommunicable. — Muhammad Iqbal

He philosophy of Islam will be shown in terms of the modern philosophy, and if there are imperfections in the old ideas then they shall be removed. My task is merely constructive, and in this construction I shall take into consideration the best traditions of Islamic philosophy. — Muhammad Iqbal

The causality-bound aspect of Nature is not the whole truth. Ultimate Reality is invading our consciousness from other directions as well, and the purely intellectual method of overcoming Nature is not the only way. — Muhammad Iqbal

God is not a dead equation! — Muhammad Iqbal

The Ego is partly free. partly determined, and reaches fuller freedom by approaching the Individual who is most free: God. — Muhammad Iqbal

The thought of a limit to perceptual space and time staggers the mind. — Muhammad Iqbal

The revealed and mystic literature of mankind bears ample testimony to the fact that religious experience has been too enduring and dominant in the history of mankind to be rejected as mere illusion. There seems to be no reason, then, to accept the normal level of human experience as fact and reject its other levels as mystical and emotional. — Muhammad Iqbal

The poet's nature is all searching, creator and nourisher of desire; the poet is like the heart in a people's breast, a people without a poet is a mere heap of clay. If the purpose of poetry is the fashioning of men, poetry is likewise the heir of prophecy. — Muhammad Iqbal

Be not entangled in this world of days and nights; Thou hast another time and space as well. — Muhammad Iqbal

Another way of judging the value of a prophet's religious experience, therefore, would be to examine the type of manhood that he has created, and the cultural world that has sprung out of the spirit of his message. — Muhammad Iqbal

Maa tujhe salaam
pher lete hai nazar jis waqt bete or bahu..
ajnabi apne hi ghar me hae ban jati hai maaa.. — Muhammad Iqbal

You remember what Goethe said in the moment of his death [ ... ] 'More light.' Death opens up the way to more light, and carries us to those regions where we stand face to face with eternal Beauty and Truth. I remember the time when I read Goethe's poems with you, and I hope you also remember those happy days when we were so near to each other spiritually speaking.
Iqbals Briefwechsel mit Emma Wegenast (S. 45, Iqbal and Goethe, Christina Oesterheld) — Muhammad Iqbal

Reh Gyi Rasm-e-Azan, Rooh-e-Bilali Na Rahi
Falsafa Reh Gya, Talqeen-e-Ghazali Na Rahi
Azan yet sounds, but never now Like Bilal's, soulfully;
Philosophy, conviction-less, Now mourns its Ghazzali — Muhammad Iqbal

Thus passing through the infinite varieties of space we reach the Divine space which is absolutely free from all dimensions and constitutes the meeting point of all infinities. — Muhammad Iqbal

The religion of that prophet [Karl Marx] who knew not the truth, is founded upon equality of the belly. — Muhammad Iqbal

Arise and pour pure wine into my cup,
Pour moon beams into the dark night of my
thought,
That I may lead home the wanderer
And imbue the idle looker-on with restless
impatience;
And advance hotly on a new quest
And become known as the champion of a new
spirit — Muhammad Iqbal

The spirit of philosophy is one of free inquiry. It suspects all authority. Its function is to trace the uncritical assumptions of human thought to their hiding places, and in this pursuit it may finally end in denial or a frank admission of the incapacity of pure reason to reach the ultimate reality. — Muhammad Iqbal

Thou art not for the earth, nor for the Heaven the world is for thee, thou art not for the world. — Muhammad Iqbal

Words, without power, is mere philosophy. — Muhammad Iqbal

Who am I? Who art Thou? Where is the world? — Muhammad Iqbal

The new world is as yet
behind the veil of destiny
In my eyes, however
its dawn has been unveiled — Muhammad Iqbal

I tell the truth: your enemy is also your friend-his presence makes your life fuller and richer. — Muhammad Iqbal

Be aware of your own worth, use all of your power to achieve it. Create an ocean from a dewdrop. Do not beg for light from the moon, obtain it from the spark within you. — Muhammad Iqbal

Destiny is the prison and chain of the ignorant. Understand that destiny like the water of the Nile: Water before the faithful, blood before the unbeliever. — Muhammad Iqbal

What is the character and general structure of the universe in which we live? Is there a permanent element in the constitution of this universe? How are we related to it? What place do we occupy in it, and what is the kind of conduct that befits the place we occupy? These questions are common to religion, philosophy, and higher poetry — Muhammad Iqbal

We have strayed away from God, and He is in quest of us; Like us, He is humble and is a prisoner of desire: He is hidden in every atom, and yet is a stranger to us: He is revealed in the moonlight, and in the embrace of houses. — Muhammad Iqbal

It is the nature of the self to manifest itself, In every atom slumbers the might of the self. — Muhammad Iqbal

I have never considered myself a poet. I have no interest in poetic artistry. — Muhammad Iqbal

But the universe, as a collection of finite things, presents itself as a kind of island situated in a pure vacuity to which time, regarded as a series of mutually exclusive moments, is nothing and does nothing. — Muhammad Iqbal

In the first period religious life appears as a form of discipline which the individual or a whole people must accept as an unconditional command without any rational understanding of the ultimate meaning and purpose of that command. — Muhammad Iqbal

It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity - by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal - has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own. — Muhammad Iqbal

I am but as the spark that gleams for a moment,
His burning candle consumed me - the moth;
His wine overwhelmed my goblet,
The master of Rum transmuted my earth to gold
And set my ashes aflame. — Muhammad Iqbal

The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something. — Muhammad Iqbal

The ultimate purpose of religious life is to make this evolution move in a direction far more important to the destiny of the ego than the moral health of the social fabric which forms his present environment. — Muhammad Iqbal

Though the terror of the sea gives to none security, in the secret of the shell. Self preserving we may dwell. — Muhammad Iqbal

Alas for a love whose fire is extinct,
A love that was born in the Holy Place and died in the house of idols! — Muhammad Iqbal

Failure is not fatal until we surrender
trying again is the key of glorious victory — Muhammad Iqbal

The immediacy of mystic experience simply means that we know God just as we know other objects. God is not a mathematical entity or a system of concepts mutually related to one another and having no reference to experience. — Muhammad Iqbal

If one cannot live the life of the brave, then it is better to die like the brave. — Muhammad Iqbal

A community receives light from its history, it becomes aware of itself by remembrance of its history. — Muhammad Iqbal

The wing of the Falcon brings to the king, the wing if the crow brings him to the cemetery. — Muhammad Iqbal

From love's plectrum arises
the song of the string of life
Love is the light of life
love is the fire of life — Muhammad Iqbal

But inner experience is only one source of human knowledge. — Muhammad Iqbal

Inductive reason, which alone makes man master of his environment, is an achievement; and when once born it must be reinforced by inhibiting the growth of other modes of knowledge. — Muhammad Iqbal

Unbeliever is he who follows predestination even if he be Muslim, Faithful is he, if he himself is the Divine Destiny. — Muhammad Iqbal

The possibility of a scientific treatment of history means a wider experience, a greater maturity of practical reason, and finally a fuller realization of certain basic ideas regarding the nature of life and time. — Muhammad Iqbal

Look at the evils of the world around you and protect yourself from them. Our teachers give all the wrong messages to our youth, since they take away the natural flare from the soul. Take it from me that all knowledge is useless until it is connected with your life, because the purpose of knowledge is nothing but to show you the splendors of yourself! — Muhammad Iqbal

Human intellect is natures attempt at self criticism — Muhammad Iqbal

I said, "The thing we quested after is never attained."
He said, "The unattainable - that thing is my desire! — Muhammad Iqbal

If faith is lost, there is no security and there is no life for him who does not adhere to religion. — Muhammad Iqbal

I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interest of India and Islam. — Muhammad Iqbal

Why hast thou made me born in this country, The inhabitant of which is satisfied with being a slave? — Muhammad Iqbal

A wrong concept misleads the understanding; a wrong deed degrades the whole man, and may eventually demolish the structure of the human ego. — Muhammad Iqbal

It is true that we are made of dust. And the world is also made of dust. But the dust has motes rising. — Muhammad Iqbal

Everything that possesses life dies if it has to live in uncongenial surroundings. — Muhammad Iqbal

Life is a struggle and not a matter of privilege. It is nothing but one's knowledge of the temporal and the spiritual world. — Muhammad Iqbal

When the thinking of a people becomes corrupt, the pure silver becomes impure in its hands. — Muhammad Iqbal

I am a hidden meaning made to defy. The grasp of words, and walk away With free will and destiny. As living, revolutionary clay. — Muhammad Iqbal

Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science. — Muhammad Iqbal

The scientific observer of Nature is a kind of mystic seeker in the act of prayer. — Muhammad Iqbal

But only a brief moment
is granted to the brave
one breath or two, whose wage is
The long nights of the grave — Muhammad Iqbal

I lead no party; I follow no leader. I have given the best part of my life to careful study of Islam, its law and polity, its culture, its history and its literature. — Muhammad Iqbal

Rise above sectional interests and private ambitions ... Pass from matter to spirit. Matter is diversity; spirit is light, life and unity. — Muhammad Iqbal

Why should I ask the wise men: Whence is my beginning? I am busy with the thought: Where will be my end? — Muhammad Iqbal

It is the lot of man to share in the deeper aspirations of the universe around him and to share his own destiny as well as that of the universe, now by adjusting himself to its forces, now by putting the whole of his energy to his own ends and purposes. — Muhammad Iqbal

That is why, according to this newer psychology, Christianity has already fulfilled its biological mission, and it is impossible for the modern man to understand its original significance. — Muhammad Iqbal

Nations are born in the hearts of poets, they prosper and die in the hands of politicians. — Muhammad Iqbal

The soul is neither inside nor outside the body; neither proximate to nor separate from it. — Muhammad Iqbal

My ancestors were Brahmins. They spent their lives in search of god. I am spending my life in search of man. — Muhammad Iqbal

I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism. — Muhammad Iqbal