Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You could lead whole populations around by their desires, by their fantasy projections.

Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

Face your fears or they will climb over your back.

Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.

I am not the river I am the net.

Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, the formation of that self demands our utmost care and attention.

Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. Get the rich, the greedy, the criminals, the stupid leader and so on ad nauseam.

Expediency is a law of nature. The camel is a wonderful animal, but the desert made the camel.

If I'm on a boat I will wave to every breathing thing I pass. If I'm not on a boat I try to avoid every breathing thing I pass.

Why do I always feel like you're trying to staple my umbilical cord to the corner of your desk?

Words There is no good father, that's the rule. Don't lay the blame on men but on the bond of paternity, which is rotten. To beget children, nothing better; to have them, what iniquity!

I think that the Internet is really cool because a lot of young feminists don't feel like they have to reinvent the wheel.

Over the course of the last quarter century I've learned a lot. And the main thing I've learned is that we're better together and that our society needs inclusion - right? - not exclusion.

I believe that cunning is not only morally wrong but also politically expedient, and have therefore always discountenanced its use even from the practical standpoint.

Absorption in Imam Husayn's affairs (his life and his person, etc.), away from his missionary side is backwardness.

Other people and their opinions hold no power in defining our destiny.

Man can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean like a fish, he can burrow into the ground like a mole. Now if only he could walk the earth like a man, this would be paradise.