Khomeini Iran Quotes & Sayings

The consequences of this will come later. The hell with it. All of this felt right. He could collect her. Keep her forever. It might be the greatest capture she ever felt. — Calia Read

The West found an excuse for every incident and boxed and labeled it under the context of the country in which it took place. They attributed Iran's conflict and the victory of Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini to an inner conflict within Iran. They considered the Lebanese war a civil war among factions. They considered the overall Arab-Israeli conflict a Palestinian-versus-Israeli conflict over land. Yet in all these conflicts radical Islam was the driving force or lingered just under the surface. — Brigitte Gabriel

Ironically, even as Khomeini empowered some women, he also found ways of oppressing their entire gender. The regime replaced the shah's secular law with an Islamic law, which allowed men to marry up to four wives, to divorce them whenever the husbands wished, and to retain custody of children. The law put the value of a woman's life at half of that of a man's life, and the value of her testimony at half that of a man's testimony.
Thus women in Iran became watchdogs and scapegoats, both the foot soldiers of the new regime and its victims. Newly empowered, they were also newly oppressed. Theirs was a paradoxical plight - and at the time, no one could have foreseen how it would one day make women a force of enormous change in Iran. — Nazila Fathi

After the Shah's departure from Iran, I will not become a president nor accept any other leadership role. Just like before, I limit my activities only to guiding and directing the people. — Ruhollah Khomeini

We often brag that we are never bored with ourselves, and are so vain as never to think ourselves bad company. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

My pride and identity is wrapped up in my big trips. But I can't always be on one - I need to plan them and fund them, and I want some semblance of a normal life too. — Andrew Skurka

What country is stabler than Iran? Where else in the world would an assassinated prime minister be so quickly replaced? — Ruhollah Khomeini

Personal desire, age, and my health do not allow me to personally have a role in running the country [i.e. Iran] after the fall of the current system [of the Shah]. — Ruhollah Khomeini

Since Khomeini's death, the popular appeal of an Islamic state - and of fundamentalism - has surely dimmed. Thinkers still debate and warriors kill, but no country seems prepared to emulate Iran. Perhaps revolutions happen only under majestic leaders, and no one like Khomeini has since appeared. — Ruhollah Khomeini

These issues that exist among people that we are Iranian and what we need to do for Iran are not correct; these issues are not correct. This issue, which is perhaps being discussed everywhere, regarding paying attention to nation and nationality is nonsense in Islam and is against Islam. One of the things that the designers of Imperialism and their agents have promoted is the idea of nation and nationality. — Ruhollah Khomeini

Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures. — M.F.K. Fisher

The Islamic Revolution of Iran is honourable for it is the cry which has its origin in Ayatollah Khomeini's conscience. — Ruhollah Khomeini

I believe that when an elder dies, a library is burned: vast sums of wisdom and knowledge are lost. Throughout the world libraries are ablaze with scant attention. — Elizabeth Kapu'uwailani Lindsey

Prior to his takeover of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini was camping near Paris, giving daily news conferences to a fawning international press corps without a murmur of complaint to France from the United States about the disaster it was coddling in the incredibly naive liberal belief that this extremist cleric would be an improvement over the Shah. — Alexander Haig

That was the first time I experienced the desperate orgiastic pleasure of this form of public mourning: it was the one place where people mingled and touched bodies and shared emotions without restraint or guilt. There was a wild, sexually flavored frenzy in the air. Later, when I saw a slogan by Khomeini saying that the Islamic Republic survives through its mourning ceremonies, I could testify to its truth. — Azar Nafisi

I was impressed by the Taj Mahal. A good bit of work, well looked after, worth paying money to see. — Karl Pilkington

In Iran's future Islamic system everyone can express their opinion, and the Islamic government will respond to logic with logic. — Ruhollah Khomeini

There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board. — A.S. Byatt