Alan > Alan's Quotes

“Life is a journey, not a destination.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Before you trust your camel to Allah's protection, tie it fast on to your fence.”
― Kurban Said, Ali and Nino

“From this book, you obtained intellectual weapons that could be used to attack socialism.”
― Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem

“Marmaduke's theory was that, as he couldn't understand Christianity, it was safe to premise that people whose religion was a mixture of degraded Buddhism and devilworship couldn't understand it either. So he founded a Buddhist mission, to teach 'em their own religion.”
― Talbot Mundy, Om, the Secret of Ahbor Valley

“I heard, when I was in Delhi, that the men of the West are studying the construction of the atom, and have guessed at the force imprisoned in it. Wait until they have learned how to explode the atom, and then see what they will do to one another.”
― Talbot Mundy, Om, the Secret of Ahbor Valley

“That little spark of life, if I should do my duty, should be fanned into a flame, whose light should blaze across the world, and bless, and brighten it.”
― Talbot Mundy, Om, the Secret of Ahbor Valley

“And as if blowing it up, flooding it, and keeping it behind the klyon wasn't enough, State Security special forces patrolled the area until 1989. Some locals say there was an additional 'live fence' of thousands of vipers specially bred for this purpose by Uzbeks along the southern Black Sea, under something called decree number 56. Why Uzbeks? Why vipers? Did decree 56 read: 'Let us fulfil the five-year snake plan in one year'?”
― Kapka Kassabova, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe

“And, most precious of all, you will have Time—that rare and lovely gift that your Western countries have lost the more they have pursued it.”
― James Hilton, Lost Horizon

“There’s always a little truth behind every ‘just kidding’. A little knowledge behind every ‘I don’t know’. A little emotion behind every ‘I don’t care’. And a little pain behind every ‘it’s okay’.”
― Anonymous

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Turki al Bin ‘ali does the Islamic equivalent of smashing an electric guitar and kicking over an amplifier every time he steps up to the minbar.”
― Graeme Wood, The Way of the Strangers

“This last report is particularly intriguing insofar as it implies that Muhammad received his call to prophethood not—as the most famous account would have it—atop Mount Hira occupied in prayerful meditation and acts of pious devotion but while shepherding flocks for wealthy Meccans.”
― Sean Anthony, Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam

“Patricia Crone famously quipped that, with regard to Muhammad's trade journeys in sīrah-maghāzī literature, "What the [Arabic] sources offer are fifteen equally fictitious versions of an event that never took place.”
― Sean Anthony, Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam

“A very dangerous principle is now being established as a social right: Thou shalt not hurt others with words.”
― Jonathan Rauch, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought

“Impelled by the notions that science is oppression and criticism is violence, the central regulation of debate and inquiry is returning to respectability—this time in a humanitarian disguise.”
― Jonathan Rauch, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought