Hooman Quotes & Sayings

It strikes me often while I am in Iran that were Christian evangelicals to take a tour of Iran today, they might find it the model for an ideal society they seek in America. Replace Allah with God, Mohammad with Jesus, keep the same public and private notions of chastity, sin, salvation, and God's will, and a Christian Republic is born. — Hooman Majd

Iran is a huge country and much, much more sophisticated than most people imagine ... It certainly has the potential to be at least the way Turkey is to most Americans. — Hooman Majd

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

As a child, I was always very interested in music and had friends who were in the music business. I kind of accidentally fell into it and loved it. There was no reason not to - it was a great career. — Hooman Majd

I mean, we do believe in due process in America. I thought we did. — Hooman Majd

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

Turkey is viewed as a very modern country and a great place to go and visit and yet Islamic as well. Iran is in some ways like that ... with the difference that Iran is probably more influential than Turkey. — Hooman Majd

I know that my cell phone in Iran ... is bugged, and they listen in, and my emails, I'm sure, are monitored inside Iran. They have my email address; it's not like they can't snoop on it. — Hooman Majd

Cultures reflect the interactions of mixed populations. — Peter Heather

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

I was born in Iran, left at a very young age - less than a year old - and grew up and was educated in the West. — Hooman Majd

The wrong Democratic reaction to a stupid Republican utterance is to play hurt. — Hooman Majd

It's an important point to make that people can't just be invalidated, eradicated, because they don't fit tidily into a box. And more and more, the modern world is all about conformity. — Lindsay Duncan

I think there is an American attitude that is very hard to break which is "We're great. Who wouldn't want to be like us? Who wouldn't want to have the benefits of our largesse, handing out aid and having American companies based in their countries?" and "our culture is great," and all that. It's hard for us to imagine ourselves as not being the greatest country on earth. — Hooman Majd

The thing about Iran is there are many political factions and it's not quite the dictatorial, authoritarian state with one person always making every single decision ... — Hooman Majd

Inside Iran, people are actually quite well-educated about America. There are things they don't understand, particularly in the government, but the people, by and large, know the American sensibility quite well, and the reverse is not true. — Hooman Majd

Nima Shirazi's is an important progressive voice in the Iran debate in the West, often deconstructing the myths (and sometimes propaganda) we commonly encounter in the mainstream media. With succinct and elegant prose, and with no axe to grind, he exposes the hypocrisy of Western attitudes toward Iran. — Hooman Majd

The problem is that Iran has been identified as a dangerous enemy, and the longer the media forwards that proposition - and the media is guilty, just as it was in the Iraq war - then the easier it becomes for Americans to accept that we might just have to resort to military force to remove any Iranian threat. — Hooman Majd

Art can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature. In the former all is seen; it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in comparison; but Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots. — Henry David Thoreau

It's a tradition in Islamic society to issue pardons at the end of Ramadan. — Hooman Majd

For every citizen that was robbed, I had failed. — Babatunde Fashola

There's a lack of knowledge about Iran and the Iranian people. — Hooman Majd

Certainly we shall rise, certainly we shall see and gladly, joyfully tell one another all that has been. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In its efforts to learn as much as possible about nature, modern physics has found that certain things can never be "known" with certainty. Much of our knowledge must always remain uncertain. The most we can know is in terms of probabilities. — Richard P. Feynman

Foreign journalists have to have an approved interpreter assigned them, which they have to pay for, who also acts as guide. As an Iranian, even writing for foreign media, I've been mercifully unrestricted. — Hooman Majd

The city of Tehran is a very modern metropolis, and there's an emphasis in the Islamic republic on science and advancement and technology. — Hooman Majd

I grew up thinking of myself as an American but also, because of my parents and the Iranian culture that was in our home, as an Iranian. So if there's any such thing as dual loyalty, then I have it - at least culturally. — Hooman Majd

While it is in no way racist for any author to write a book exclusively about white women, it is fundamentally racist for books to be published that focus solely on the American white woman's experience in which that experience is assumed to be the American woman's experience. — Bell Hooks

This sounds like a cliche, but I always wanted to write. After college, I did some writing and realized very quickly that it's hard to make a living as a writer. At that point, I was more interested in fiction writing. — Hooman Majd

A popular bumper sticker post-9/11, and pretty faded these days, proclaims drivers of the cars to be 'Proud to be an American.' It really should say 'Lucky to be an American,' for I doubt very much that the drivers had much say in having been born here, and are not old enough to have participated in the drafting of the Constitution. — Hooman Majd

Lately, I haph startet painting my torso in pretty, motley hews. I sit in phront oph the mirror in the sleepy-room. I atmire my hantyworg. I am a hooman apstrat paining. — Mark Dunn

Americans tend not to distinguish between political rhetoric and real intentions, which can lead to great misunderstanding. — Hooman Majd

I got a couple of stories published, but the kind of money you were making for publishing a short story, I could see I wasn't going to make a living at it. — Hooman Majd

If you are an [American] politician it's very hard to imagine "now we are going to treat these guys as our equals? That's ridiculous. What have they ever done to deserve that?" — Hooman Majd