The Republic of Imagination Quotes

“Pragmatists are sometimes more prone to illusion than dreamers; when they fall for something, they fall hard, not knowing how to protect themselves, while we dreamers are more practiced in surviving the disillusionment that follows when we wake up from our dreams.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark,” Baldwin said in an interview in 1961. “Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it’s true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Stories are not mere flights of fantasy or instruments of political power and control. They link us to our past, provide us with critical insight into the present and enable us to envision our lives not just as they are but as they should be or might become. Imaginative knowledge is not something you have today and discard tomorrow. It is a way of perceiving the world and relating to it.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“The way we view fiction is a reflection of how we define ourselves as a nation. Works of the imagination are canaries in the coal mine, the measure by which we can evaluate the health of the rest of society.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“The crisis besetting America is not just an economic or political crisis; something deeper is wreaking havoc across the land, a mercenary and utilitarian attitude that demonstrates little empathy for people's actual well-being, that dismisses imagination and thought, branding passion for knowledge as irrelevant.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“But perhaps there is another, more personal reason for my disagreement with Ramin: I cannot imagine myself feeling at home in a place that is indifferent to what has become my true home, a land with no borders and few restrictions, which I have taken to calling “the Republic of Imagination.” I think of it as Nabokov’s “somehow, somewhere” or Alice’s backyard, a world that runs parallel to the real one, whose occupants need no passport or documentation. The only requirements for entry are an open mind, a restless desire to know and an indefinable urge to escape the mundane.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“How can we protect ourselves from a culture of manipulation, where tastes and flavors are re-created chemically in laboratories and given to us as natural food, where religion is packaged, televised and tweeted and commercials influence us to such an extent that they dictate not only what we eat, wear, read and want but what and how we dream. We need the pristine beauty of truth as revealed to us in fiction, poetry, music and the arts: we need to retrieve the third eye of imagination.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“American students, we are told, are falling behind in reading and math; on test after test, they score below most European students (at the level of Lithuania), and the solution, rather than seeking to engage their curiosity, has been testing and more testing— a dry and brittle method that produces lackluster results. And so resources are pulled from the “soft” fields that are not being tested. Music teachers are being fired or not replaced; art classes are quietly dropped from the curriculum; history is simplified and moralized, with little expectation that any facts will be learned or retained; and instead of reading short stories, poems and novels, students are invited to read train schedules and EPA reports whose jargon could put even the most committed environmentalist to sleep.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“So few American novels have happy endings. Perhaps this is not surprising in a nation whose declaration of independence provides its citizens not with the right to happiness, but the right to its pursuit.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“All violence is based on blindness, on a lack of reflection and empathy.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Fiction is an antidote, a reminder of the power of individual choice. Every novel has at its core a choice by at least one of its protagonists, reminding the reader that she can choose to be her own person, to go against what her parents or society or the state tell her to do and follow the faint but essential beat of her own heart.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“We the Readers are like Dorothy or Alice: we step into this magical world in order to return and retell the story through our own eyes, thus giving new meaning to the story as well as to our lives.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Primo Levi once said, “I write in order to rejoin the community of mankind.” Reading is a private act, but it joins us across continents and time.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“In fiction, every treachery and setback appears to serve some end: the characters learn and grow and come into their own. In life, it is not always clear that the hijacking of our plans is quite so provident or benign.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“The price one pays when choosing exile is the loss of all that defines you as an individual. The only thing that makes this immense loss tolerable is the discovery of a self you did not know existed - of a true independence. That is the real gift of America, not its fabled wealth and prosperity.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Education's goal is to impart knowledge, and knowledge is not only heretical, but unpredictable and often uncomfortable.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“I blame my generation for having neglected to teach our children that in life there are no safe places, that safety is an illusion. “Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark,” Baldwin said in an interview in 1961.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Those who can afford private schooling need not worry about their children being deprived of art, music and literature in the classroom: they are more sheltered, for now, from the doctrine of efficiency that has been radically refashioning the public school curriculum.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“When the founding fathers conceived of this new nation, they understood that the education of its citizens would be essential to the health of their democratic enterprise. Knowledge was not just a luxury; it was essential.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“My impulse now, as then, is to disagree. The majority of people in this country who haunt bookstores, go to readings and book festivals or simply read in the privacy of their homes are not traumatized exiles.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Imagination and the journey-quest is at the heart of every life well-lived”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Einstein was articulate and well-read, a lover of classical music, and it was he who said, "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“[A] great novel will allow you to transcend the social, racial and political limitations imposed by the vicissitudes of life and to find a deep fraternity based on empathy.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Against the onslaught of consumerism, against all the overwhelming siren voices that beckon, our only weapon is to exercise our right to choose. And to make the right choices, we need to be able to think, to reflect, to pause, to imagine, because what is being sold to you is not just toothpaste or deodorant or a bathroom fixture, but your next president or representative, your children’s future, your way and view of life.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Many things change with time, but certain basic human traits remain eternal: curiosity and empathy, the urge to know and the urge to connect.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“correlation between the growing lack of respect for ideas and the imagination and the increasing gap between rich and poor in America, reflected not just in the gulf between the salaries of CEOs and their employees but also in the high cost of education, the incredible divide between private and public schools that makes all of the fine speeches by our policy makers— most of whom send their children to private schools anyway, just as they enjoy the benefits and perks of their jobs as servants of the people— all the more insidious and insincere.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Jefferson, who spent his life collecting books, many of which he donated to the Library of Congress, boasted that America was the only country whose farmers read Homer. “A native of America who cannot read or write,” said John Adams, “is as rare an appearance . . . as a Comet or an Earthquake.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“When Huck tells Aunt Sally that no one but a "nigger" was killed and she expresses her joy at no one's being killed, this, as the saying goes, speaks volumes -- not about the inhumanity of slaves but about the utter blindness of a good-hearted, God-fearing woman.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Teaching is a funny business; you want to share these glimpses of something real and profound, but half the time students want only to know their next assignment and what they will need to study for the test.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books